Correctly calculate investment decisions using smart algorithms to calculate the optimal mix of electric and fossil fuel truck fleets
Status:
An automotive manufacturer uses a fossil fuel truck fleet for inbound transportation from its suppliers to various manufacturing plants. Logistics management wants to reduce carbon emissions by investing in an electric fleet. Due to current regulations, penalties for CO2 emissions are to be avoided and possible tax breaks for electric trucks are to be used instead. However, even with the new fleet composition, all plant deliveries should be made with truck loads utilized to the maximum to operate with the highest cost efficiency. It must also be ensured that all delivery dates to the plants can be met reliably and on time.
Challenges:
A scenario with electric trucks and fossil fuel trucks is difficult to manage. First, the right mix between fossil fuel vehicles and electric vehicles has to be found from an economic and ecological point of view. This should consider the existing business model and the prevailing traffic profiles. Planning tours with electric trucks must be feasible, e.g., in terms of vehicle range. Before high investments are made, questions must be answered such as: Which tours can be carried out with electric vehicles and which tours would be better planned with fossil fuel vehicles? What is the best deployment?
Solution:
By using flexis software, the management was able to find the right mix between fossil fuel and electric vehicles:
For the existing use case 20% of all trucks should be electric and 80 % of all trucks should be fossil fuel.
Originally, it was assumed that major investments in a new electric fleet would be necessary to demonstrate a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. However, from an economic and efficiency perspective, this was not the best solution. Distances, transshipment points, battery charging times, available charging stations, electric ranges, etc. had to be considered in the present scenario. With an intelligent algorithm from flexis, the best mix was calculated to define the strategic planning with a perfect split of the fleet for the existing business model and environment.
Result:
In this use case, flexis software calculates that the OEM can save 1% of freight costs and 35% of carbon emissions
if the above fleet mix is used. Furthermore, using optimization software for fleet management, and route and tour optimization, the combined fleet is optimally scheduled daily with the defined constraints.
The software calculates which tours are not feasible due to the limited range of electric trucks and which are better executed with fossil fuel trucks. Companies should, therefore, regularly calculate and plan the best strategic mix for their vehicle fleet within their business model, and then make the right fleet investment decision. And a good cloud-based transport planning system from flexis supports, of course, the daily automated planning and optimization of the routes and tours of a mixed vehicle fleet.