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The importance of electric vehicles (EVs) lies in the fact that they are seen as a key solution to the climate change problem. In the last decade, this topic has received significant interest from the scientific community, contributing to publications in different areas. However, the existing literature is fragmented, and efforts have not been made to categorize and analyze it from a freight logistics perspective. This work aims to fill this gap by presenting a systematic literature review (SLR) of the potential impacts of EVs on sustainable road-freight transport operations, including in urban areas. We reviewed 237 peer-reviewed articles for bibliometric and literature classification analysis, whereby 119 articles were subsequently studied for content analysis and research gaps related to sustainability approaches. The bibliometric analysis showed significant growth in the body of research in the past two years, reflected in the number of journal papers, authors, and references. In the literature and keywords analysis, we identified five main categories and research areas: economic and competitive aspects, city logistics, environmental sustainability, vehicle fleet operations, and infrastructure and technology. In addition, this paper revealed eight key research gaps for future research: multimodal integration, long-haul and heavy-duty truck approaches, emerging economies, business models, social factors, charging infrastructure inclusion, and fleet replacement policies. These findings can enlighten researchers and practitioners toward sustainable research and real-life applications of electromobility in freight logistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Electrifying urban transportation through the adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs) has great potential to mitigate two global challenges, namely climate change and energy scarcity, and also to improve local air quality and further benefit human health. This paper was focused on the six typical factors potentially influencing the purchase behaviour of EVs in Beijing, China, namely vehicle price, vehicle usage, social influence, environmental awareness, purchase-related policies and usage-related policies. Specifically, this study used the data collected in a paper-based questionnaire survey in Beijing from September 2015 to March 2016, covering all of the 16 administrative regions, and tried to quantify the relative importance of the six factors, based on their weights (scores) given by participants. Furthermore, Multinomial Logit (MNL) models and Moran's I (a measure of global spatial autocorrelation) were used to analyse the weights of each factor from statistical and spatial perspectives, respectively. The results suggest that 1) vehicle price and usage tend to be more influential among the six factors, accounting for 32.3% and 28.1% of the importance; 2) Apart from the weight of social influence, the weights of the other five factors are closely associated with socio-demographic characteristics, such as individual income and the level of education; 3) people having similar attitudes towards vehicle usage (Moran's I = 0.10) and purchase restriction (Moran's I = 0.14) tend to live close to each other. This paper concludes with a discussion on applying the empirical findings in policy making and modelling of EV purchase behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]