With the development of intelligent transportation, the dynamic vehicle routing problem (DVRP) has attracted increasing attention in the academic community. This paper analyzes the characteristics of the DVRP. From the perspective of dynamic elements, the DVRP model is divided into three types of the VRP including the dynamic demand based VRP, real-time traffic information based VRP, dynamic demand and real-time traffic information based VRP. Then, the three types of the VRP are reviewed respectively. On this basis, the research progress of the routing update strategy and optimization algorithm for three types of DVRP models are introduced. Finally, the future development trend of the DVRP is presented.