The electric vehicle routing problem with backhauls

Abstract

In the classical vehicle routing problem with backhauls (VRPB) the customers are divided into two sets; the linehaul and backhaul customers, so that the distribution and collection services of goods are separated into different routes. This is justified by the need to avoid the reorganization of the loads inside the vehicles, to reduce the return of the vehicles with empty load and to give greater priority to the customers of the linehaul. Many logistics companies have special responsibility to make their operations greener, and electric vehicles (EVs) can be an efficient solution. Thus, when the fleet consists of electric vehicles (EVs), the driving range is limited due to their battery capacities and, therefore, it is necessary to visit recharging stations along their route. In this paper the electric vehicle routing problem with backhauls (EVRPB) is introduced and formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model. This formulation is based on the generalization of the open vehicle routing problem considering a set of new constraints focussed on maintaining the arborescence condition of the linehaul and backhaul paths. Different charging points for the EVs are considered in order to recharge the battery at the end of the linehaul route or during the course of the backhaul route. Finally, a heuristic initialization methodology is proposed, in which an auxiliary graph is used for the efficient coding of feasible solutions to the problem. The operation and effectiveness of the proposed formulation is tested on two VRPB instance datasets of literature which have been adapted to the EVRPB.

Electric Vehicle Routing, Arc Routing, and Team Orienteering Problems in Sustainable Transportation

“…Therefore, they propose a new methodology that serves as a framework for optimization algorithms to solve the E-VRP with stochastic and time-dependent travel times without allowing battery recharging along the way. Granada-Echeverri et al [116] introduce the E-VRP with backhauls. Furthermore, Yang et al [125] propose an E-VRP with mixed backward, time windows, and recharge strategies.…”

A Survey on Environmentally Friendly Vehicle Routing Problem and a Proposal of Its Classification

“…An effective scheduling generation scheme, population initialization, two search strategies on representation and scheduling and crossover operators have been designed to solve the problem. Granada-Echeverri et al [140] proposed the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls (E-VRP-B) that includes both a set of customers to whom products are to be delivered and a set of customers whose goods need to be transported back to the distribution center. Both the linehaul customers and the backhaul customers must be visited contiguously, and all routes must contain at least one linehaul customer.…”

A Benchmark Test Suite for the Electric Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem

“…Four different sets of CVRP benchmark instances are used to generate the new E-CVRP benchmark instances in the experiments 6 , including the popular instances of Christofides and Eilon [24], Christofides et al [25], and Fisher [26], and the recent instances of Uchua et al [27]. The details for converting a CVRP instance to an E-CVRP instance are given in Section IV.…”

“…The EVRP aims to find the best possible routes for a fleet of EVs so that a set of customers is visited once and only once by an EV, ensuring that the EVs will never run out of energy. Several variations of the EVRP have been introduced that mainly differ on their constraints such as the EVRP with time windows [2], the EVRP with pick up and delivery [3], the EVRP with multiple depots [4], the EVRP with service times [5] and the EVRP with backuals [6]. Refer to the comprehensive survey in [7] for further details.…”