Charge Scheduling of Electric Vehicles for Last-Mile Distribution of an E-grocer

This paper proposes a model for charge scheduling of electric vehicles in last-mile distribution that takes into account battery degradation. A mixed integer linear programming formulation is proposed that minimizes labor, battery degradation and time-dependent energy costs. The benefit of implementing charge schedule optimization is assessed for a real-life case study at e-grocer Picnic. It is shown that charging optimization yields an overall reduction of charging costs by 25.2% when compared to the current operational charging performance. Furthermore, the impacts of three different shift schedule types, the increase in vehicle battery size and the coordinated charging are investigated. It turns out that more energy demanding shift schedules result in higher average charging cost per charged amount of energy. The introduction of a larger battery size as well as coordinated charging show potential for decreasing overall costs.