The XL Instances for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem

Abstract

This paper introduces a new set of large-scale benchmark instances for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). The proposed XL set extends existing benchmarks by covering instances with 1,000 to 10,000 customers and a wide range of structural characteristics, following established generation principles from prior CVRP studies. A computational study involving several state-of-the-art algorithms is conducted to provide initial best known solutions (BKSs) for the XL instances, which serve as a baseline for a community-driven BKS challenge launched on the CVRPLib website. The instances are made publicly available to support experimental evaluation and comparison of solution methods. Furthermore, additional computational analyses are reported to compare algorithmic performance on other existing CVRP benchmark instances.