Electric vehicles in the last mile of urban freight transportation: A sustainability assessment of postal deliveries in Rio de Janeiro-Brazil

The growth of urban population and the rise of e-commerce activities increase the complexity of the last-mile of parcel deliveries and its impacts to the environment and quality of life. Despite the relevance, emerging countries have difficult to establish and implement alternatives to the conventional scope of fossil-based operations. This paper proposes a method to assess alternative strategies for the last-mile of parcel deliveries, in terms of social, environmental, and economic impacts and presents an application to assess the distribution strategy of a postal company located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Moreover, we developed a systematic literature review to develop realistic alternatives to the baseline scenario, which operates with diesel propelled light duty vehicles. Literature points to the reduction of the dimensions of vehicles, as well as to the migration of the propulsion source to electric energy, as sustainable alternatives for last mile deliveries in urban areas. For that reason, we opted to evaluate the use of electric vehicles of smaller dimensions, tricycle and LDV, in the last mile of parcel deliveries, assessing two alternative scenarios: one with the use of electric LDV type BEV; and the other with electric tricycles. Results indicated that the use electric tricycle is a more feasible alternative regarding the economic, environmental and social aspects, demanding no public incentives.