Ettlingen City Logistics

Electromobile logistics in Ettlingen: Less logistics traffic in the city is the main goal of the pilot project "Ettlingen bringt's". E-vehicles are to be used to transport deliveries from a micro-hub located on the outskirts of the city to the center.

1. Goals

The project "Ettlingen bringt's" aims to develop a solution in consultation with the city of Ettlingen and SMEs located there, taking into account Ettlingen’s structures as a medium-sized town. The goal is to minimize the volume of combustion-engine delivery traffic in the old town, increase the efficiency of urban logistics, improve the quality of life and at the same time enable new business models, especially for local SMEs.

To project website

The project has three main objectives:

Cost savings via increased efficiency
Additional services
Reduction of environmental impact

2. Background

In the fall of 2020, the city of Ettlingen launched the pilot project "Electromobile Logistics in Ettlingen". The background to this is, among other things, an EU target that calls for 50 percent emission-free parcel delivery by 2030. This primarily affects deliveries on the so-called "last mile", the last link in the supply chain to the recipient or customer.

The project "Electromobile Logistics in Ettlingen" with the brand name "Ettlingen bringt's" is being funded by the Ministry of Economics, Labor and Housing as part of the funding call "Ideas Competition for Electromobile Logistics in Small and Medium-Sized Cities". The city's cooperation partners are the Logistics Research Center of Reutlingen University, which acts as project manager and provides scientific support for the project, the company "Transport Betz" as a local, medium-sized logistics company, which has set up the mini central warehouse (micro hub) close to the center and manages the electromobile delivery on the "last mile", and "pakadoo GmbH", which provides the necessary IT system as well as the parcel cabinet for the general public.

3. Project progression

The framework conditions and the progression of the "Ettlingen bringt's" project are almost identical to the "deliveRT” project - both are inner-city delivery concepts for emission-free pooling and delivery. Therefore, the following paragraph is taken from the "deliveRT" description with minor changes.

The concept centers on a micro-hub close to the city center at the Transport Betz company, where parcels from different parcel service providers or from retailers are collected and from there, in the next step, are delivered in a consolidated manner within the city center. The delivery location may be either a parcel locker, a parcel store or the customer's personal address. Currently, there is already a parcel locker on Thiebauthstraße in downtown Ettlingen. By specifying the Micro-Hub address as the delivery location and a personal identification number in the c/o address line, parcels are assigned and consolidated in the Micro-Hub. The citizens of Ettlingen then receive their parcels by emission-free delivery using electrified cargo bicycles at a freely selectable time to a location of their choice (for example, a parcel locker).

Concept logistics flow

A pakadoo user may have packages delivered to the central hub using his primary point delivery address and his Pakadoo PAK ID. The user is shown the pakadoo points and multilabel stores in his region on the pakadoo website and in the user app. The user can freely decide to which pakadoo point he wants to have the package delivered. pakadoo points and multilabel stores can be searched for via the app or via the web. A map view and a zip code search are available as aids.
The hub employees accept the parcels from all parcel delivery services. After the parcels have been accepted, the hub employees record the parcel data in the system using the pakadoo point app. When a shipment is entered, a new label is generated that contains information about the pakadoo Point to be used and thus also the route. The new label makes it easy for the hub employees to sort the shipments for transport to the actual pakadoo point (pickup location).
Depending on the locker system, the service operator stores the package directly at the central display or in a pakadoo locker with the help of the pakadoo point app. The recipient is informed via email and push notification. The notification also includes the address of the pakadoo point where the package is ready for pickup.
The end customer can buy parcel labels via the pakadoo user app or myPakadoo. The parcel labels may be printed directly by the user at home or with the help of a QR code in one of the multilabel stores. For this purpose, pakadoo provides the option to print parcel labels in the multilabel store with the help of the point app. These shipments are taken back to the hub during delivery by the hub employees and handed over to the courier service there.

The impetus for the considerations was that in the city center alone, over 300 parcels and packages are delivered to private individuals every day, plus deliveries to retailers: one shoe store alone receives up to 100 parcels a day from various delivery companies. Online retailing, which received a tremendous boost during the pandemic, has significantly raised the volume further due to both orders and returns.
Johannes Arnold
Mayor of Ettlingen

Our project partners

In addition to the city of Ettlingen as project leader of the entire project and interface to the citizens, other cooperation partners support the Citylogistik Ettlingen project. The startup Pakadoo, which was spun off from LGI as a private limited company in 2018, provided the necessary IT system and the parcel lockers. The local freight forwarder Transport Betzs set up the mini central warehouse (micro hub) close to the town center and managed the electromobile delivery on the last mile.