Designing Mixed-Fleet of Electric and Autonomous Vehicles for Home Grocery Delivery Operation: An Agent-Based Modelling Study

This paper proposes a hypothetical agent-based model of home grocery delivery operation using electric and autonomous vehicles. In the last-mile delivery context, agent-based modelling studies that consider the use of autonomous vehicles is lacking. The model in this paper can produce a mixed-fleet design that can serve a set of synthetic orders punctually. Through extensive computer experimentation, firstly, we investigate how infrastructure setup affects the fleet design. Secondly, we highlight the benefits of mixed-fleet over homogeneous fleet design. And thirdly, we evaluate the benefits of using autonomous vehicles in last-mile delivery operation.