Autonomous Delivery Vehicles in Two-Echelon Routing for Sustainable Last-Mile Logistics

The rapid growth of e-commerce has intensified the demand for efficient and sustainable urban logistics systems. This study introduces the two-echelon vehicle routing problem with autonomous delivery vehicles (2E-VRP-ADV) to optimize last-mile delivery by integrating conventional trucks in the first echelon and autonomous delivery vehicles in the second. A mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to minimize routing costs while considering ADV-specific parameters such as battery and load capacity constraints. Computational experiments on newly generated instances were performed, and sensitivity analyses revealed the impact of ADV battery and load capacities on delivery efficiency, providing actionable insights for improving environmental sustainability. (c) Copyright 2025 The Authors.