New Paradigm of Sustainable Urban Mobility: Electric and Autonomous Vehicles—A Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The growing relevance of sustainability, as well as the necessity to replace traditional forms of transportation with sustainable ones, has made sustainable urban mobility an imperative. In order to respond to the ever-increasing need to develop sustainable modes of transport, the importance of electric, autonomous, and electric autonomous vehicles is increasingly emphasized. In addition, as trends of growth and development in electric autonomous vehicle technology are increasing, one of the questions that has appeared is whether autonomous electric vehicles represent one of the mechanisms that will be used to increase the sustainability of urban mobility. With this in mind, the results of a systematic analysis of existing research in the WOS and Scopus databases using the keywords “urban mobility”, “electric vehicles”, and “autonomous vehicles” was carried out to identify research trends in the use of autonomous electric vehicles in urban areas. The research showed that authors focus on the advantages and disadvantages of autonomous electric vehicles and their usage in the urban mobility system, but an insufficient number of authors consider and define the need to plan the transition towards incorporating autonomous electric vehicles into the urban system. The results of this research also indicate an insufficient number of papers that research and describe the application of autonomous electric vehicles in distribution logistics. This paper provides an overview of existing research related to autonomous electric vehicles and the challenges of transition in the context of infrastructure and the development of a culture of sustainability among urban residents.