DPD Germany goes all-electric in Hamburg for zero-emission deliveries
DPD Germany will deliver all its parcels in Hamburg city centre using electric vehicles by summer 2019 thus ensuring emission-free deliveries in central districts of the city.
For this purpose, the company will be deploying a mixture of small vehicles such as cargo bikes and e-scooters, as well as larger vehicles such as fully electric vans and trucks. Several micro depots across the urban delivery areas will enable local distribution of parcels by small e-vehicles.
"E-mobility can be an important answer to the growing challenges of urban parcel delivery," Boris Winkelmann, CEO of DPD Germany, explained. "After numerous tests, we are now for the first time switching to fully electric vehicles in Hamburg's city centre. We also hope that this will provide us with valuable insights into the long-term performance of various electric models - especially when it comes to large-scale delivery and collection of parcels for commercial shippers and recipients."
DPD's zero-emission parcel delivery operations in Hamburg's inner-city will replace ten conventional delivery rounds. In concrete terms, the existing diesel vehicles will be replaced by VW e-Crafters, electrically powered cargo bikes, e-scooters and e-trucks.
Within the scope of the federal government's ZUKUNFT.DE initiative, which is partly subsidising the purchase of these vehicles, DPD is already using several VW e-Crafters as part of a pre-series test, with two of them operating in Hamburg. This number is now to be significantly increased. With its electric drive train and a range of up to 160 km, the VW e-Crafter is especially suitable for parcel deliveries in the inner city, where short delivery rounds with a large number of stops are typical.
As far as the electric cargo bikes are concerned, past experience from other cities has shown that a cargo bike can almost entirely replace a conventional delivery van under favourable conditions. DPD is currently deploying three cargo bikes in Hamburg, manufactured by Radkutsche. These bikes are particularly suitable for the delivery of parcels to private recipients who only receive one or two parcels per stop.
As for e-scooters, DPD has been testing two TRIPL scooters from the Danish manufacturer EWII for the past year, with more vehicles of this type operating in Berlin and Cologne. The TRIPL vehicle has a greater range than a cargo bike and is significantly more manoeuvrable and efficient in urban areas than conventional vans as it can stop right at the consignee's front door. This saves both time and travelling distances, and also relieves the pressure on inner-city traffic.
In terms of e-trucks, DPD is considering deploying several fully electric trucks in Hamburg for pickup and delivery on behalf of large business customers. The company has been successfully deploying the trucks in other countries including the FUSO eCanter from Daimler and Mitsubishi in London.
While the larger electric vans and trucks can operate from the DPD parcel distribution centre in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, the smaller electric vehicles operate from urban micro depots. The parcels are delivered to the micro depots in the morning by truck or van, and then distributed within the delivery area by cargo bike or TRIPL scooter. In October this year, DPD began operating its first micro depot in Hamburg. The TRIPL scooters are based in an underground garage in Hamburg's district Hafencity, where they are charged overnight before being loaded with parcels during the day
Both in Hamburg and in other cities, DPD is hoping for greater support from municipalities in establishing alternative delivery concepts, and in particular when it comes to finding suitable locations for micro depots. "Parcel operators are already indispensable for cities today, and they are becoming increasingly important both for residents and for retailers," Winkelmann said. "It is essential for cities and municipalities to play an even greater role in working with us to find constructive solutions for parcel deliveries of tomorrow."
The ZUKUNFT.DE initiative aims to create customer-friendly, sustainable, flexible and transparent delivery operations. Led by the city of Hamburg and covering the federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Hessen, it focuses on electrifying parcel deliveries along the "last mile".
Within the framework of the ZUKUNFT.DE project, around 500 emission-free e-vans from predominantly large-scale industrial production (Daimler and Volkswagen) will be used by established CEP operators (DPD, GLS, Hermes, UPS) in German city centres. In addition to converting vehicle fleets to clean drive technology and practical tests of these e-vehicles, loading and load-space management will also be implemented at the relevant depot locations. In addition, concepts for scalability are being developed for the country-wide deployment of e-mobility deliveries.