The Use of an Electric Vehicle Fleet for the Domiciliary Hospitalization Unit of the Hospital of Alcoy

Abstract

The use of electric cars versus thermal or conventional vehicles presents clear advantages from the environmental point of view. However, these advantages are very limited by the autonomy problems that, still today, electric vehicles present. Certain activities in fleets belonging to private companies or public entities can adapt very well to the use of electric vehicles. For example, many of these vehicles perform daily trips of less than one hundred km and some of these routes are conducted only in the morning or afternoon only. In addition, these fleet vehicles are usually parked in fixed places (garages, reserved slots in the street, etc.) and this fact allows recharging to take place during the afternoon or nighttime. One of the most interesting cases for the use of fleets of electric cars is the Domiciliary Hospitalization Unit (DHU) of hospitals. These units care for patients that, for several reasons, receive their treatments in their homes with hospitalization characteristics. The hospital of Alcoy (Alicante, Spain) is pioneering the implementation and use of electric vehicles for the movement of health workers from the DHU. Since July 2014, the hospital uses these vehicles through a service provided by a private company selected by public tender. The company providing the service, MOVUS SL, instructed the Universitat Politècnica de València to perform a study that could validate this action. This validation was carried out attending to sustainability in its triple facets: economic, environmental and social. The main results of this work are shown in the present paper.