A Hybrid Tour-Based Model For Energy Analysis Of Multi-Modal Intra-City Freight: A Case Study Of Autonomous Electric Vehicles: Preprint

With the emergence of cutting-edge transportation technologies, such as electric vehicles, connected and autonomous vehicles, and drones, the adoption of multimodal freight mobility has the potential to improve efficiency and save more energy. This paper proposes a hybrid tour-based model to evaluate the energy impact of multimodal intra-city freight movement for future scenarios. The model is built based on the traveling salesman problem model and clustering techniques. A case study using autonomous electric vehicles for package delivery is evaluated. The study was conducted using data analyzed from the Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area. The initial results show that multimodal package delivery using autonomous electric vehicles reduced total travel time by 45% and saved total energy use by 19%, but increased total vehicle miles traveled by 15% when compared with the baseline scenario.