Sustainable Logistics: The Impact of e-Bikes in Last Mile Delivery

In recent years, urban freight distribution has been deeply reshaped by rapid urbanization, the exponential growth of e-commerce, and evolving consumer expectations. The Last Mile (LM) segment, widely recognized as the most costly and inefficient part of the supply chain, presents critical challenges in terms of cost-effectiveness, operational efficiency, and environmental sustainability. One promising solution involves the integration of light and electric vehicles, particu-larly electric cargo bikes, into urban delivery fleets. This chapter provides a review of the literature on sustainable and light urban mobility, with a specific emphasis on modeling the use of electric cargo bikes in the context of Vehicle Routing Prob-lems (VRPs) and Fleet Size and Mix VRPs (FSMVRPs) applied to Last Mile logis-tics. Given the inherent uncertainties in these operations, such as variable customer demand, travel and service times, and energy consumption, special attention is given to stochastic optimization approaches. The chapter concludes by highlighting key gaps in the literature and proposing directions for future research.