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Renault EZ-PRO Is the City Delivery Road Train of the Future

This year’s two major themes at the Hannover Motor Show, an event dedicated to commercial vehicles, seem to be electric&connected and modular.
Renault EZ-PRO 15 photos
Photo: Renault
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Over the past week, we got a glimpse at the Volkswagen ID Buzz Cargo, the Nissan Navara Dark Sky concept and the Mercedes-Benz Urbanetic. Now it’s time for a bit of French cuisine, at the hands of Renault.

Their most attractive concept at the German event is the EZ-PRO, an autonomous, electric, connected and shared robo-pod concept. And by robo-pod, Renault means a modular road train.

In essence, all commercial vehicle manufacturers seem to envision a future when transportation of goods is done by a simple self-driving platform, on top of which containers with various loads are mounted.

In Renault’s case, for last mile deliveries, these containers can be attached, mounted on driverless platforms, at the back of a lead pod, forming a train of sorts. In the front, the leading pod is doing all the navigation, supervised by a human concierge.

According to Renault, this convoy can depart the same logistics hub with different cargo in each of the containers, but managed by the same logistics operator.

The recipient of each shipment will be able to track the route of the package, which they can access once at the destination via self-service lockers in the robo-pods by using a smartphone.

This last mile transportation solution has been envisioned by Renault as a means to reduce congestion. A study published in September 2017 by Les Echos Etude claims that 30 percent of all traffic in cities is to be blamed on couriers transporting cargo from a central hub to the destination.

Renault didn’t announce any plans to further research possible production of the EZ-PRO. The biggest obstacle holding them back is of course the autonomous technology needed to make modular cargo transport a reality.
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 Download: Renault EZ-PRO fact sheet (PDF)

About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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