Green Vehicle Routing Model and Optimization Algorithm with Soft Time Window and Dynamic Demand

This study investigates the dynamic-demand green vehicle routing problem with soft time windows (DDGVRPSTW). A two-stage optimization model is developed to minimize total distribution cost, including vehicle operating cost, fixed dispatch cost, fuel consumption cost, carbon emission cost, and time window penalty cost. To solve the model, a hybrid artificial bee colony state-transition algorithm (HABC-STA) is proposed. In the pre-optimization stage, multiple initial routes are generated and refined to obtain an initial distribution plan. In the dynamic optimization stage, customer information is updated at a specified event time, and four state-transition operators are used to search the neighborhood of the current solution and generate a revised routing plan with lower cost. Computational results on Solomon benchmark instances and a real-world case study show that the proposed method effectively reduces both total cost and environmental cost. The results also indicate that selecting an appropriate distribution scheme can significantly reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions while improving overall routing efficiency.