Electric Vehicle Routing Problem: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Transportation plays an important role in today’s era. To manage the on-time delivery in logistics, it is crucial
to manage the fleet for the delivery. Because of environmental concerns and new regulations, green vehicles
and electric vehicles are becoming more famous in logistics. Due to their limited driving range, the authors
need to be recharge again and again. The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is extended to electric vehicle routing
problem (EVRP) having different characteristics. The problem is NP hard and computationally challenging to
solve large scale instances. To solve such problems, algorithms were introduced such as exact algorithms,
metaheuristics, and machine learning to solve real-life problems, energy consumption and environmental
considerations. EVRP is applicable in urban logistics, fleet management, and goods distribution. Research in
EVRP combined with sustainable development goals give solutions to optimization problems that aim to
manage the social, economic, and environmental objectives. EVRPs increase the operational efficiency as well
as contribute as a greener and more sustainable future by promoting eco-friendly logistics practices. From all
this, we can conclude that EVRPs are a strong tool to support the SDGs, particularly for the clean environment,
sustainable infrastructure, and logistics. In this paper, a literature review on electric vehicle routing problem is
given and research gaps along with future directions are also discussed. To deal with the new and complex
routing challenges in EVRP, heuristics and metaheuristics approaches are developed and adapted by different
researchers. Research publications from the past 13 years has been taken into consideration including 95
research articles, that deal with EVRP. An overview on these procedures has been introduced in this review
article.