Urban logistics decision makers face serious challenges in trying to make urban freight transport (UFT) efficient and sustainable. Therefore, it is necessary to identify best practices (BPs) to promote improvements on activity levels, modal shifts to lower-carbon transport systems, lowering energy and intensity, and reducing fuel carbon intensity. This paper conducts an exhaustive literature review that seeks to identify that are directly applicable to BPs promoting sustainable UFT and that indicate the opportunities and challenges of urban logistics. The results indicate that, although BPs make sense for themselves, the most powerful effect occurs when two or more of them are used together, multiplying their strengths. Furthermore, there is an expressive participation of environmental and economic indicators (costs and service levels) to the detriment of social indicators, thus indicating a literary gap.

The promotion of electric mobility has the potential to reduce several impacts of the road transport sector, such as increased emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutants and natural resource depletion. As such, decision makers and other stakeholders around the world have invested significant efforts in the transition to sustainable urban mobility based on the use of electric vehicles. However, there are few studies that investigate the potential benefits of electric mobility in all its facets; i.e., most focus on analyzing the benefits of replacing conventional cars while leaving aside other means of transportation with greater use and, consequently, higher emissions, such as, primarily, public transport and freight transport vehicles. Thus, this study aims to develop an action plan focused on electric mobility—APOEM, which stipulates gradual implementation steps in a time horizon of 5 years. For this purpose, a city with potential for electric mobility implementation called Atibaia, in the countryside of the State of São Paulo, in Brazil, is investigated. The results show that, in an ambitious scenario of electric vehicle deployment in the City of Atibaia, which presents energy supply compatible with demand, it would be possible to reduce a total of 30,788.70 tons of GHG in 5 years, and, as for emissions of air pollutants, it would be possible to reduce 140.38 tons of CO, 36.38 tons of NMHC, 1.58 tons of RCHO, 130.20 tons of NOx, 3.54 tons of MP and 0.75 tons of SO2 in 5 years. It is also worth noting that, in order for electrification to generate a greater contribution to the environment, it is necessary that electric mobility be generated from renewable energy sources.