AbstractThis paper presents a general Electric Vehicle Routing Problem (EVRP) that finds the optimal routing strategy with minimal travel time cost and energy cost as well as number of EVs dispatched. This is the first EVRP model to consider the vehicle load effect on battery consumption. As demonstrated with a case study in Austin TX, the effect of vehicle load on routing strategy cannot be ignored. Compared to diesel truck VRP, EVRP has comparable travel time and distance but long en-route re-charging time, which translates into a considerable amount of additional labor cost. Lastly, the network topology greatly affects the routing strategies.