Supply and waste disposal of urban areas

In the fast-growing mega-cities of this world, city planners and operators of local public transport are often confronted with the challenge that high passenger transport capacities are required for a given district, but the time and financial effort required for the construction of a suburban rail or streetcar line is estimated to be too great. For these cases, vehicles were designed and developed at Fraunhofer IVI ten years ago that combine the advantages of city buses (hardly any infrastructure effort, high flexibility, low costs) and those of streetcars (high transport capacity, low personnel requirement per passenger). The result is rubber-tired buses with 5, 6 or 8 axles that are equipped with a steering system allowing the vehicles to operate on a virtual track with minimal trailing curves and high maneuverability.

In addition to the steering system, other components of this vehicle category need to be rethought. These vehicles are often designed and operated battery-electrically or, in current projects, fuel cell-electrically. High demands are also made of the vehicles‘ configurations. For example, there is an increasing demand for these vehicles to be completely low-floor, which in turn requires new types of axles and motor concepts. To date, no low-floor, driven and steerable axles exist on the market, nor are they being developed specifically for this vehicle category. This also opens up new opportunities for developing this market with innovative solutions such as wheel hub motors.

City logistics is a fundamental component of the supply infrastructure of cities. In addition to commercial customers such as manufacturing companies and retailers, private households are making increasing use of logistics services. In the course of the continuously growing Internet trade, the transport volumes and frequencies of small consignments have been increasing for years. As parcel volumes increase, so does the number of delivery vehicles and the amount of emissions they cause.

In order to reduce the negative environmental impact of commercial transport in the future and improve the delivery situation in urban areas, various measures are being tested and scientifically monitored in pilot projects. For example, digital delivery zones are being piloted to better manage delivery traffic and avoid the second-row parking of vehicles. A positive side effect of digitized parking space is data on the use of these loading zones. This information, which can help to develop demand-oriented and sustainable city logistics concepts, is often missing. For this reason, we are involved in various projects to improve the data and planning basis of logistics systems. This information can then be incorporated into the optimization of route algorithms or into logistics demand models.