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Purpose Passenger car occupancy has been falling for years. Partly empty vehicles on our road networks decrease passenger transport sustainability but also contain an opportunity for freight transport. Within Crowd logistics (CL), delivery operations are carried out by using passengers' excess capacity on journeys that are already taking place, resulting in economic, social and environmental benefits. Existing CL initiatives show, however, that there are important differences between concepts in terms of sustainability. The research aims to develop a suitable and comprehensive definition for CL and identify which factors determine the sustainability potential of CL. Methods We systematically analysed a set of 42 papers and interviewed 11 logistics practitioners in order to capture the state of practice. Results Following the literature and interviews, we firstly define CL as 'an information connectivity enabled marketplace concept that matches supply and demand for logistics services with an undefined and external crowd that has free capacity with regards to time and/or space, participates on a voluntary basis and is compensated accordingly'. Secondly, we identify a set of 18 characteristics that can describe the variety of CL concepts. Thirdly, we indicate whether the identified characteristics affect the economy, society and/or environment. The research shows that all characteristics influence economic sustainability while 11 characteristics also affect social and/ or environmental sustainability. Conclusions Our research helps local policy-makers to adapt laws and regulations to the sharing economy developments and provides insight for businesses which CL concept fits their company's corporate social responsibility strategy.

How to compare the environmental performance of different vehicle technologies? Vehicles with lower tailpipe emissions are perceived as cleaner. However, does it make sense to look only to tailpipe emissions? Limiting the comparison only to these emissions denies the fact that there are emissions involved during the production of a fuel and this approach gives too much advantage to zero-tailpipe vehicles like battery electric vehicles (BEV) and fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV). Would it be enough to combine fuel production and tailpipe emissions? Especially when comparing the environmental performance of alternative vehicle technologies, the emissions during production of the specific components and their appropriate end-of-life treatment processes should also be taken into account. Therefore, the complete life cycle of the vehicle should be included in order to avoid problem shifting from one life stage to another. In this article, a full life cycle assessment (LCA) of petrol, diesel, fuel cell electric (FCEV), compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), hybrid electric, battery electric (BEV), bio-diesel and bio-ethanol vehicles has been performed. The aim of the manuscript is to investigate the impact of the different vehicle technologies on the environment and to OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2014, 7 1468 develop a range-based modeling system that enables a more robust interpretation of the LCA results for a group of vehicles. Results are shown for climate change, respiratory effects, acidification and mineral extraction damage of the different vehicle technologies. A broad range of results is obtained due to the variability within the car market. It is concluded that it is essential to take into account the influence of all the vehicle parameters on the LCA results.

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