Getting the goods you ordered in China to Europe is easy. Packages or containers are loaded onto planes or ships and reach distribution hubs with relative ease. But as Hans Klis found out, that last mile can prove to be very tricky.
After travelling hundreds or thousands of miles by planes, trains, boats, and trucks, cargo can get stuck in city traffic. Advances in connectivity aim to solve this problem and are fundamentally changing the way goods and services flow to urban areas and navigate once inside them.
More than three billion people are currently connected to the internet. Increasing numbers of consumers and businesses use it to order all kinds of commodities from around the world. All of which have to be delivered to their doorstep. With connectivity comes increasing customer expectations (the status of deliveries is available 24/7) and so the dependence on the transportation system also grows.
Implementing the same connectivity can improve fleet functionality. Google and Amazon are already working on the driverless cars and drones that will one day be responsible for last-mile delivery of goods and services (or even the miles leading up to that final one).
According to Hani Mahmassani, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center in Illinois, drones will probably see serious use “as early as two to three years”.
Lees ‘The Green Mile‘ verder op TU-Automotive.
