Electric trucks are changing the requirements for logistics software

Soloplan is preparing for the use of electric trucks in the transport sector and are correspondingly developing their transport management system CarLo in cooperation with the University of Kempten

(Kempten, 7 July 2021) As part of the successful cooperation with the University of Kempten, Soloplan regularly holds guest lectures on practical industry knowledge. This year is no exception: In the context of the masters course in logistics at the University of Kempten, Soloplan has taken part in an analysis of the development of the transport sector with regard to the use of electric vehicles.

In the course of the semester, the students analysed the current status of electric commercial vehicles. The objective of the project was to find out which adjustments Soloplan should make to its transport management system CarLo in the future due to the current changes on the market for electric commercial vehicles.

At the beginning of the project, a kick-off meeting took place for which the students were invited to the company headquarters “Soloplan City” in Kempten. First, they were introduced more closely to the forwarding software CarLo, and then, Fabian Heidl, CEO at Soloplan, and Christian Heidl, CDO, answered all of the questions of the students in the masters course during an expert interview. Thus, a good foundation for further research was created, based on which the work can be continued at the university. During the project, the students created a written project report, which, apart from basic technological information on electromobility, also contains provider research for electric trucks, an infrastructure analysis for electric charging stations and a recommendation for specific research issues that arise for Soloplan.

Last Friday, the final presentation of the project took place at the University of Kempten. During the presentation, the students presented their recommendations for Soloplan’s decision-making process regarding the further development of CarLo in the area of electromobility. Those recommendations contain multiple aspects, whereby the most important goal during the implementation of new functions should always be the optimisation of the charging times.

In the future, with regard to route planning, a function for the optimal charging of the battery could be integrated in CarLo. The idea is to use the rest and break times of the driver or (un)loading times at the warehouse to charge the battery.
Additionally, parameters and information regarding charging stations should be implemented in the transport software. Among other things, aspects such as the maximum parking time for trucks, the maximum number of vehicles that can be charged at the same time or the structural connection of the charging station are significant.

A general result of the project is that the infrastructure for electric vehicles in Germany leaves room for improvement and urgently needs to be improved in order to increase the percentage of electric commercial vehicles in Germany in the long term. However, at the same time, the number of electric truck providers is increasing, which means that the use of such vehicles will continually increase in the future, especially for short or medium distances.

Soloplan thanks the students for the comprehensive research, the successful project with high-quality results and the very positive cooperation. Soloplan also thanks Prof. Dr Martin Göbl and the University of Kempten for the successful organisation of the project.