What Is EV Route Planning?

Here’s one reason to think that now is the right moment for fleet electrification: Amazon’s fleet of electric vehicles is still growing, and they’re leveraging everything from electric cargo bikes to electric light and medium trucks to try and work towards their goal of zero emissions by 2024.

And they’re not alone. There are plenty of delivery businesses out there who either share similar goals, who have aspirations of deploying more EVs, or who are just curious about the logistics of introducing EVs into their fleets. In fact, DispatchTrack’s own research a couple of years ago found that 77% of fleets were already prioritizing electrification and other sustainability initiatives. 

All this raises an important question. How does adding EVs to the fleet impact your last mile logistics processes? More specifically, how do the unique pros and cons of these vehicles impact the way that you do your route optimization? 

If you can answer these questions effectively within the context of your own organizations, you can make progress towards any sustainability goals and initiatives you may have. And, with the right technology, you can save money in the process. 

EV Route Planning: Who Needs It, and How Does It Work?

If you want to get the most out of any electric vehicles in your fleet, you need to take EV route planning into consideration. When you’re planning routes for traditional vehicles, you’re most likely trying to minimize distance travelled within the parameters that you’ve set out—hitting customer time windows, matching up skilled drivers to skilled jobs, matching vehicle types to the relevant product, etc. 

For EV route planning, you have an extra parameter to consider: maximum travel distance without a charge. This is the point where some people throw up their hands in despair—after all, planning efficient routes is complex enough without adding in yet another complication. But modern route optimization solutions should really be able to handle this as a matter of course. 

In order to ensure effective route planning for EVs, your solution needs to enable you to configure different vehicle types (so that you can specify which routes are utilizing EVs), and it needs to be able to factor charging stops into routes where appropriate. 

Crucially, charging time is also going to be a factor in these routes. In the same way that you add service time for individual deliveries—shorter for a parcel dropoff, longer for an installation—you’ll need to add in charging time for any routes that require a charging stop.  

This is all straightforward enough with a solution that’s built to handle EV routing. What’s slightly more complex is assigning orders optimally when you have a mixed fleet of some EVs and some traditional vehicles. Here, you’d generally want lighter goods and more urban delivery areas for your electric vehicles, while reserving gas-powered trucks for longer hauls. This can be difficult to eyeball when you’re looking to maximize your fleet and driver capacity, but a robust last mile delivery platform should be able to support you. 

What Is Carbon Neutral Shipping?

If you’re already adopting EVs into your fleet—or even if you’re just in the early stages of looking into them—you’re probably acquainted with the idea of carbon neutral shipping. We mentioned Amazon above, and they’re one of numerous logistics-related businesses with climate goals around reducing or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from their supply chains within the next 10 to 15 years. That goal represents carbon neutral shipping in a nutshell. 

Right now, the complexity of the global supply chain doesn’t put anyone in a position to just flip a switch and eliminate emissions. In a world that still relies heavily on fossil fuels to transport people and goods, you have to work with what you have, and generally speaking that will mean foregoing carbon neutral options at least somewhere in the supply chain. 

That said, the tide really is shifting. Carbon neutral shipping is going to be an increasing area of focus for many businesses going forward—especially once consumers see that it’s possible to find retailers and distributors who can promise zero emissions. When that happens, the businesses that have laid the groundwork for green logistics and carbon neutral shipping are going to be poised to take advantage. 

Investing in a partially electrified fleet is a great place to start. 

Green Logistics Best Practices

Like we said above, part of the green logistics/carbon neutral shipping journey is going to revolve around future-proofing your supply chain to take advantage of advancements down the line. At the same time, there’s plenty that you can do right now to decrease your carbon footprint in last mile logistics. 

Here are a few best practices for green logistics that delivery organizations can take advantage of right now:

Optimize for miles driven

Every mile less driven is better for the environment—and, as an added bonus, it’s cheaper as well. Even without electric vehicles, you can still leverage route optimization capabilities to ensure that your drivers are driving fewer miles per stop and thus burning less fuel. 

Reduce missed deliveries

Any time you have to make a redelivery attempt, your carbon footprint for the last mile more than doubles. Luckily, there are ways that you can significantly reduce the odds of missed and failed deliveries. By and large, this comes down to two delivery fundamentals:

• Deliver on time: Make sure that your ETAs are accurate and your drivers are given realistic routes that they can easily follow and execute on. The more parameters you’re dealing with, the more difficult this is to do by hand. AI and machine learning can be useful tools here for turning delivery data into more accurate ETA predictions. 
• Keep customers in the loop: The most common reason for a failed delivery is that the customer wasn’t kept informed and connected throughout the process. When you give your customers the ability to track their deliveries in real time, receive alerts and notifications, and connect with your team easily to get answers to your questions, they’re much more likely to be at the delivery site when the truck shows up. The result is a significant reduction in delivery failures. 

Minimize unplanned returns and wastage

For reducing unplanned returns, the same general delivery fundamentals apply. The more consistently you can achieve a first attempt delivery success, the less likely your items are to be damaged in transit—which means they’re that much less likely to be sent back by the customer. 

When it comes to wastage, documentation is key. Any time an item comes back to the warehouse, you need to know exactly why it came back. Was it already damaged and in need of repair? Is it something that can still be sold as is? Is it unsalvageable? Return reasons codes here for your drivers can be a big help, as can robust proof of delivery. The latter helps businesses to ensure a complete record of every delivery and strong chain of custody, so that perfectly good items don’t wind up on the scrapheap. 

As delivery organizations make the pivot towards green logistics, best practices like these can put you in a position to stay ahead of the curve. Combine that with efficient EV route planning and you can put yourself in a position to immediately decrease your carbon footprint while still ensuring efficient, cost-effective deliveries.