50 May/June 2025 | E-Mobility Engineering Peter Donaldson goes the extra mile to investigate the latest developments in urban deliveries The last mile ELM Mobility has set itself the ambitious task of redefining last-mile delivery. The vehicle for this redefinition takes the form of a small battery electric truck in the L7e category. Efficiency, low cost and minimal downtime achieved through its robustness, simplicity and ease of maintenance and repair are key design drivers of the project. “Our mission is to lower the cost per delivery and reduce urban environmental impact,” says Carsten Astheimer, the company’s founder and co-CEO. He is also founder and MD of Astheimer Design, which is collaborating with Prodrive on the vehicle’s development. Along with Kevin O’Flynn, chief engineer, E/E systems at Prodrive, Astheimer briefed us on the project. The two companies have a long history of developing commercial vehicles together, Astheimer points out, through which they have gained unique insights into the commercial vehicle market and the needs of logistics companies, which are most acute in urban last-mile delivery, Astheimer notes. Early days ELM Mobility agreed to talk in considerable depth about the programme at a relatively early stage in its development, having just finished the proof-of-concept phase and built a demonstrator based on a donor EV. While the resulting vehicle is visually, architecturally and ergonomically close to what is intended for the production machine, there are still many decisions to be made and much engineering to be done on the electric powertrain and other systems, more of which later. Together, Astheimer and Prodrive founded ELM Mobility, now an independent entity, and provide it with services including customer requirements analysis, vehicle architecture, interior and exterior design, advanced drivetrain solutions and engineering of the chassis, steering, brakes and ancillary electrics. Assessing the need Astheimer explains that the need for such vehicles is being driven by developments in demographics, e-commerce and concerns for the health of urban environments. He points out that urban populations and e-commerce continue to grow, with the World Economic Forum predicting that around 36% more vehicles will be making deliveries by 2030. “The increase in demand for urban logistics is putting pressure on logistics companies, with last-mile deliveries now accounting for up to 50% of supply chain costs with many delivery companies losing money,” he says. He also notes that light commercial vehicles are the largest single contributor of CO2 emissions within the logistics industry, pumping out 40% of the total emissions, and that urban clean air zones and corporate CO2 targets are forcing logistics companies to electrify their fleets. Furthermore, they require what Astheimer calls an “ecosystem of vehicles” to satisfy the variety of duty cycles and goods to be delivered in urban areas, including trucks, vans, cargo bikes and powerassisted carts and trolleys to aid pedestrian deliveries. “Logistics companies have told us that the solutions that are available for urban last-mile logistics are not Cross section of ELM’s L7e-CU vehicle showing the initial general arrangement with drive at the rear, underfloor battery and central driving position (All images courtesy of ELM)
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