Shaping E-roads Efficiency for Freight Automation

The SEE-FAr project aims to evaluate the complex impact of freight vehicles automation and electrification distinguishing the charging options between e-roads and plug-in to promote decarbonized and cost-efficient freight transportation. The project has four objectives: to identify the intercity freight delivery patterns distinguishing the tours and round trips with focus on regular and random routes; to justify the conditions of the plug-in and e-roads efficiency compared with fossil fuel-based freight deliveries; to enhance the state-of-the-art framework of the agent-based modeling for freight intercity deliveries regarding e-roads and plug-in charging options; to classify the expected impacts due to the freight vehicles automation and decarbonization. Using a large-scale GPS traffic movement across Bavaria and Austria regions, this project will evaluate the current state of good delivery patterns for Bavaria and Austria regions. Based on these patterns, through a combination of behavioral model, optimization and microsimulation, this project will evaluate the impacts of different placement of different charging and autonomous technologies for various freight movement scenarios (vehicle class mixes, long vs short vehicle range, relative charging speeds, plug-ins vs e-road alternatives).