Optimisation of low-carbon distribution routing in cold chain logistics based on pure electric vehicles

To ensure effective reduction of energy consumption and environmental pollution, this paper investigates the vehicle routing optimisation problem considering carbon emission cost. Under meeting the charging demand of pure electric refrigerated vehicles, based on the idea of cost-effectiveness, a model is constructed to minimise the total cost of low-carbon distribution in cold chain logistics, which includes the fixed costs of vehicles, transportation cost, refrigeration cost, penalty costs for violating customer time window, carbon emission cost and charging cost. For this model, an improved genetic algorithm (IGA) is proposed and solved and analysed to obtain the optimal solution. The results show that the improved genetic algorithm is more effective and results in a greater optimal reduction of the total cost of the route for the whole distribution process.