Last-mile delivery is the most carbon-intense stage of delivery. The project Smoovit wants to change that. By bringing together many different actors and creating a smart logistics system, transportation in city centres can be reduced.
Many modes of transport into our cities are inefficient. Some vehicles travel half-empty, and this transportation of “air” involves unnecessary costs and a big footprint on the environment.
Reducing emissions with collaboration
In the Smoovit project, industry, academia and society will jointly develop and test a system of systems in Gothenburg to reduce the number of goods transported to the inner-city area by 40 per cent.
Smoovit started its journey in 2019 and now, the first consolidated transport has been delivered to the city of Gothenburg. Parcels from DHL and Best was driven into the city hub in Nordstan where they were consolidated onto cargo bikes for last-mile distribution by distributor Pling to nearby recipients.
How it works
Instead of having transport providers deliver goods using trucks with low load rates, Smoovit will help to consolidate goods across multiple transport providers to reduce traffic into the city centre.
The project works in three steps:
1. Smoovit receives data from multiple transport providers to optimise distribution.
2. The goods arrive at Urban Consolidation Centers outside the city to be consolidated and loaded onto larger and fully loaded trucks.
3. Trucks arrive at a city hub where goods are loaded onto smaller zero-emission distribution vehicles.
Learn more about last-mile delivery here.
Read more about Smoovit at Volvo’s website.
About Smoovit
Smoovit is a research project partly financed by Vinnova. The project is backed by a consortium of 11 partners connected to the transport industry. The partners are: Volvo Group, DHL, Best, Pling, GLC, Velove, Nordstan, Trafikkontoret Göteborgs stad, RISE, IVL and Trafikverket.
