Abstract:
The purpose of the study is to link the performance to be obtained from drive technologies which are in various stages of their technological development up to ready-to-use models of utility vehicles to the services offered by logistics providers and freight carriers to their customers. In methodological terms this means a mutual feedback between experts under the aspect of need-focused technology diffusion directed towards the actual practice of freight transport. From this it is possible to define effects and structurally position them in their basic potential impact. In this respect,
In response to this brief, the consortium was made up of partners proficient in the subsegments of drive and fuel technology development, fuel and energy market monitoring, traffic system planning with know-how in freight transport and network infrastructure planning with environmental know-how. This combination of experts in a team is a novel concept so that special attention is accorded to interdisciplinary coordination and synoptic editing of results in order to ensure that the detailed results contributed by the partners are precisely interlaced from the start through to the final outcome.
Activities are structured in three phases. Initially, a status quo analysis is performed to evaluate the vehicle drives currently marketed or being developed by those performance parameters that are relevant to assess their utility for certain logistic tasks and transport chains based on typical routes within the transport networks in order to map their internal, (network-)external and, ultimately, external impact on the environment. This analysis is to include all drive technologies that can be used for freight transport. Although the focus of the study will be on the patterns made by utility vehicles in road traffic, other modes of transport will not be ignored. Once the performance range and utility potentials have been identified, the next stage is to perform a feasibility analysis in order to identify the framework conditions of efficiency and competitiveness offered by the vehicle models and the demand for them in the transport market, conditions which, when met, can be expected to make for some substitution for traditional drive technologies, subject to feature and capacity aspects of the traffic infrastructure used. The third stage then involves an anticipation analysis which adds the temporal dimension of innovation diffusion to the discussion and which highlights the conditions of a conversion strategy differentiated by type of operation (thus interweaving the logistic task with the territories to be supplied and their characteristic traffic infrastructure).
In this way, the study aims to illuminate the competing interests of expectations of ecological effects raised with a view to the sustainable handling of freight transport and the need to ensure an economically efficient and competitive use of transport systems, and to draw up a future guideline that outlines the direction of a road map for decision-makers in politics and business.
