Through technological developments and our changing shopping habits, the parcel delivery market has greatly changed. We want the purchases we ordered online delivered at our doorstep and we want them now! This development has resulted in a tremendous increase in urban delivery miles, mostly still with diesel vans. At the same time, there is an increasing concern about air quality and safety in our cities. Springtime looked into this topic and created DISPATCH, a versatile and compact E-cargo vehicle for big cities.
With same-day or at least next-day delivery becoming the new standard, a lot of pressure is being put onto the supply chain. The way post and parcel companies use artificial intelligence, IoT, robots, and other innovations will determine their relevance in the future. Although autonomous delivery will play a growing role in parcel delivery, traditional, human delivery will keep playing an important role. Especially for parcels with special delivery requirements and e-groceries delivery, where returns play an important role, human delivery is the only way to go.
Although the entire delivery chain is shifting, in the European landscape, we still see mostly cumbersome diesel delivery vans, half-full, ploughing through the crowds and traffic congestion of our city centers. But things are changing. The transition to a car-free city is motivated by an increasing concern around pollution in cities. Removing cars from city-centers is a simple way to tackle air and noise pollution, as well as the ability to reallocate land previously used for vehicle infrastructure such as parking lots and wide roads to bike paths and public space. We see some sustainable initiatives like for instance the Coolblue delivery cargo E-bike in The Netherlands, but obviously these solutions have very limited cargo space.
_Piaggio Ape
We believe there is an interesting gap to fill, and got inspired by the form-factor and versatility of the legendary Piaggio Ape, an affo
