The Cargohopper is a solar-powered electric caravan of trailers which, according to the organisers, can do the work of five vans, cutting 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions on a yearly basis. Like the Gothenburg city delivery programme, local government support was crucial in setting up the Cargohopper in the Dutch city of Utrecht. There are several urban delivery companies turning to cargo bikes, including Outspoken! Delivery in Cambridge which carries out sub-contracted work for major freight companies. Fees from private transport companies and advertising sales fund the service, and it is expected to be a self-sustaining business by next year and expand into other parts of the inner city.Īccording to a report by the EU-funded research project CycleLogistics, an estimated 51% of goods transported in cities could be shifted to bicycles and cargo bikes, significantly reducing emissions and congestion. Stadsleveransen, part-financed by the EU’s Smartset project, only accounts for 20% of the goods volume in the area where it operates, but it handles the majority of deliveries. The pilot delivery scheme initially served just eight clients when it launched in 2012, but now close to 500 businesses take part – from small offices to major retailers – and more than 350 packages are delivered each day. There is also a small electric van assigned for transporting fresh fish from the harbour to Gothenburg’s Fish Church market.Ī small electric van transports fresh fish from harbour to market.
Private transport companies leave their packages at a freight consolidation terminal from where Stadsleveransen’s fleet of two electric cars and two cargo bikes carry the goods the final couple of kilometres. To facilitate the needs of smaller businesses which are not able to organise early-morning drop-offs, the city of Gothenburg helped launch Stadsleveransen (the City Delivery) to pool together deliveries for shops and businesses within a central zone stretching about 10 streets. The city centre could not compete with the shopping malls outside of town in terms of accessibility by car or parking places, so instead it had to present itself as an inviting and attractive environment which offers more than just shopping.” “It was a quite cramped city centre, where the traffic situation clearly affected the atmosphere and the competitiveness of the area in a negative way. “It was a messy situation here,” says Christoffer Widegren from Gothenburg’s urban transport administration. It takes time to turn around six or seven decades of car-centred city planning – but now it is happening Johan Erlandsson Cars were parked bumper to bumper along busy one-way streets, with pedestrians relegated to the narrow pavement. Go back 10 years and it was a different picture. In terms of cost and performance they were superior to aircraft in this field, a company spokesman said.Johan Erlandsson’s six-wheeled cargo bike. Under existing plans, Cargolifter expects to turn a profit in its 2002/2003 business year, ending August 31.īoeing considers airspace supervision to be a lucrative area for airships.
He said cash funds in the second quarter, ended February, totaled around 17 million euro.Īccording to official figures, cash outflow reaches around 25 million euro per quarter. "But it can also come to nothing," he cautioned.Īs Cargolifter's funds are running increasingly low, the question of whether the airships made in the east German state of Brandenburg will ever take off thus remains unanswered.Ĭhief Financial Officer Karl Bangert told Handelsblatt that the group's liquid funds would last for another three weeks at the most. Shares in Cargolifter, which are included in the M-Dax for Germany's 70 leading mid-caps, soared more than 16% to close at 3.84 euro.īut the actual objectives of the letter of intent remain unclear.Ī Boeing spokesman said that his group's involvement with Cargolifter could progress "up to an investment". The two companies announced on Thursday that they had signed a letter of intent to examine potential business opportunities to develop "lighter-than-air" vehicles for commercial, defense and security use. Boeing Corp., the world's largest aerospace group, is signalling interest in German airship developer Cargolifter, which has been plagued by financial difficulties and concern over its business plan.
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