The overarching objective of URBANIZED was to develop and demonstrate a new flexible and modular vehicle platform for small commercial e-vehicles, satisfying design principles of right-sizing vehicles for specific missions in three dimensions:
1) high-efficiency e-powertrain components and control architectures, through the use of advanced hardware and software co-design approaches.
2) interchangeable, plug & play cargo modules for different Urban Freight Transport (UFT) as defined by the European Commission Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (Retail (including e-commerce), Express/Couriers/Post, Hotel/Restaurant/Catering (HoReCa), Construction and Waste).
3) integrated energy and fleet management strategies using data, connectivity and predictive control algorithms.
The steadily growing demand related to increasing urbanisation is turning the management of logistics flows in urban areas into a more complex process, with higher demand for adaptability and flexibility for the new solutions to contribute to optimise the overall transport capacity, reducing operational costs and negative impacts (health safety).
URBANIZED focused on the design of a small, modular, all-electric, UFT N1 category vehicle and related connected e-powertrain technologies, purpose-designed to dramatically improve operations compared to the vehicles used today for the same missions, and reducing the impacts associated with the 5 UFT market sectors.
URBANIZED has validated and tested the design with two relevant use cases, including different specific related missions as defined by the end-users.
URBANIZED followed a holistic design approach working at 3 levels (systems, vehicle, fleet) during the entire project: starting with the definition of specific mission profiles within 2 main pre-selected use cases (last-mile delivery of retail, e-commerce, courier and post; HoReCa and other urban on-demand services), during the optimization loops of the design process, and until project demonstrations, performed both physical and in virtual environments, covering the specific requirements of operators.
URBANIZED brought a complementary multi- disciplinary consortium of 9 partners from 6 EU countries, involving all relevant actors from the value chain, from academic, to industrial (TIER1, OEMs) and logistics operators aiming at broadening dissemination and impact.
The main project objectives were the following:
OBJ 1. Develop and implement a novel e-powertrain platform capable of achieving, at least, an overall 10 % energy efficiency increase compared to best in class market references.
OBJ 2. Demonstrate a cost-effective solution to substantially reduce vehicle energy consumption and operational costs thanks to connectivity and (big) data algorithms by developing and implementing a self-adapted and predictive multi-level, multi-layer Energy Management System (EMS).
OBJ 3. Achieve a substantial reduction of vehicle purchasing costs.
OBJ 4. Develop a light commercial e-vehicle with better safety features comparable to 4 stars Euro NCAP (Heavy quadricycle protocol).
OBJ 5. Demonstrate the technical, economic and operational benefits of the developments in relevant environment by integrating them in a operative prototype (N1) and performing real-life demonstrations with this prototype in urban roads in Belgium and upscaling operations at fleet level in the virtual city environment of Thessaloniki Living Lab.
OBJ 6. Increase the acceptance and foster market uptake of the URBANIZED solutions by performing dedicated dissemination actions.
