# Assessing the Opportunity Offered by Electric Vehicles in Performing Service Trips to End Consumers
## 2 The Background
### Fleet Electrification  
In recent years, there has also been a profound change in the vision of society about the issues of environmental sustainability and the correlation that our habits have with air pollution and its consequences [5; 31; 32]. Among the various initiatives to pursue sustainable development, there is the use of ecological vehicles, which is certainly in the foreground [4; 22; 23]. A comparative environmental assessment of electric and traditional light-duty vehicles has been performed in [33], in which three light commercial vehicles produced by the same manufacturer with three different powertrains (diesel, compressed natural gas and electric) have been compared showing that the electric motor presents advantages in urban environments because of the numerous stops and regenerative braking that are typical for urban deliveries. Essential observations about the recent trends of EVs in urban freight transport services and analyses of technical specifications as well as operational issues for routing and scheduling procedures have been shown in [34], while in [35], the authors have analyzed LCVs' energy and purchase costs with respect to conventional diesel trucks in USA market values. The study proposed in [36] explores drivers of and barriers to existing EV adoption, which are categorized as internal, external and governmental. The implications are evaluated from a theoretical, managerial and political point of view, recognizing that an evaluation of the real advantages in the adoption of EVs for the urban distribution of goods can only be carried out from a systemic perspective. In [37; 38], the authors evaluate, from a technical point of view, both the development phases of an electric LCV and the infrastructural possibilities for the sustainable production of fuel for zero-emission vehicles (electricity, hydrogen). Policies implemented to achieve \"sustainable\" objectives can sometimes be conflicting and the estimate of the related impacts in social, economic, and environmental terms is not simple to assess. For example, end consumers want to take advantage of home deliveries, but residents of congested areas need more organized delivery services, planners want to meet climate-altering emission reduction targets, while producers and transporters hope to operate at the lowest cost and in the shortest possible amount of time. Electric powertrains not only allow the use of vehicles without direct emissions of CO\({}_{2}\) and air pollutants, but also have fewer design constraints than conventional vehicles. Although traction batteries still offer an energy density much lower than that of petrol, electric motors can generally express a higher torque and power and allow for flexible integration into vehicle chassis [22; 23; 39; 40]. Today, the electrification of the fleets of vehicles of logistics companies is one of the main initiatives aimed at improving the sustainability of transport operations. The potential benefits of using electric vehicles for last-mile distribution have been studied from different perspectives. In [41], a reduction of up to 25% in external costs is calculated with the introduction of electric vehicles in urban logistics activities, as well as a 73% reduction in CO\({}_{2}\) emissions. The optimization of vehicle routing and scheduling specificities remains limited due to the importance of operational cost savings for freight EVs [34; 35]. Even if, from a technical point of view, Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are suitable as delivery vehicles thanks to their performance being comparable to that of vehicles with Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs), and to their autonomy generally being sufficient for urban missions of use (in this case, this does not represent a critical factor) and silence, there are currently few models of battery electric LCVs available on the market and their prices are even higher than those of ICE vehicles.