Sustainable Urban Freight Transport: Analysis of Factors Affecting the Employment of Electric Commercial Vehicles

Commercial vehicles are a common mode of transport employed in the urban freight transport. Normally, they are internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles powered by burning fossil fuels. However, with deteriorating air quality and decreasing energy resources, ICE vehicles are experiencing a significant transition. Electric commercial vehicles (ECVs) as a feasible alternative to alleviate emissions and save energy resources are proposed in the field of urban freight transport. Nevertheless, with the increasing intention of adopting ECVs, the number of employed ECVs is lower than ICE vehicles and electric passenger cars. Therefore, this paper reviewed and analyzed 25 related articles to collect factors affecting the employment. Furthermore, we classified the factors into the three pillars of sustainability with integrating technological dimension. The results illustrate the influence of positive factors and negative factors on the employment. The future work will focus on ranking the priorities of factors and suggesting the logistics company to consider ECVs in their fleets thereby improving the adoption and the sustainable urban freight transport.