Dedicated Delivery Vehicle
Why do last-mile applications deserve a closer look?
The commercial two-wheeler sector in India is witnessing rapid growth on the back of the increasing digital population and their reliance on services and products at their fingertips. Digitization of services from medicine to grocery, usage of alternative modes of transport such as bike-taxi and shared rentals, and 2W adoption in tier-II and tier-III cities is gaining widespread prevalence.
In comparison to personal applications, these applications require1:
In the current usage scenario, vehicles designed for personal usage are being used in last-mile applications. Additionaly, the delivery partners have to sustain inhuman loads for long periods of time.
Learning from this Exercise:
A lot of unmet needs are there for the sector of last-mile logistics. This has also placed physiological loads on the riders that cope with it daily.
Scope of Intervention - Where can we make an impact?
Newer trends like electrification of fleets, cross-utilization of vehicles etc. There is a scope and more importantly, a need for a dedicated design effort to understand the requirements for these last-mile applications like e-commerce deliveries, grocery/food deliveries, ride-hailing and bike rentals.
Electrification of Fleets:
Cross-Utilization of Vehicles:
Different applications like e-commerce and grocery deliveries have different peak hours of operations. Usually, grocery deliveries in cities peaks in the early morning and late evenings whereas e-commerce deliveries can be done all throughout the day. Logistic companies are managing their fleets to take advantage of this and plan their operations to increase vehicle utilization and driver earnings. Shadowfax, in a 2018 report says, “Say, if you are delivering only food, you would notice that the delivery team sits idle for long period of times between the morning and evening peaks. The team can successfully handle e-commerce goods during these non-peak hours to improve their own earnings, growing your delivery business along.”
With this massive shift happening from both the product as well as service aspect, there is a real scope for designing future-ready contextual solutions from the vehicle design perspective.
Learning for this Exercise:
Recognizing a potential entry point or area which could benefit from a vehicle design perspective.
Case Study Download:
• Dedicated Delivery Vehicle......
