Taxi Driver Online

Leicester council to spend £490k on green taxi charging points - but who will use them?

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news ... en-2545569

There are currently no 'green' black cabs operating in the city

Almost £500,000 is to be spent on green taxi charging points despite no 'green' black cabs being registered in the city.

It is hoped that the 28 charge points paid for with £390,000 government funding, plus the potential for £100,000 of city council cash, will encourage cabbies and taxi companies to buy greener vehicles.

Currently there are no electric hackney cabs in the city and the council doesn’t hold information about how many private hire electric vehicles there are locally, but a spokesman said it is not believed to be more than a few.

The ultra-low emission vehicle (ULEV) hackney carriages have only recently been released but charging points could also be used by electric private hire cars.

Black cab drivers have told Leicestershire Live that more needs to be done before they would be willing to shell out the £57,000 it costs to buy an ultra-low emission vehicle (ULEV) hackney carriage.

City centre cabbie Harry Singh said: “The only way I would consider buying a green taxi is if the council was to scrap the 11 year time limit.

“An electric vehicle should be good for life, if I spend more than £50,000 on a new cab I want to know it’s going to last me longer than 11 years. It could take that long to pay for itself.”

Leicestershire Live has asked the city council if there are plans to change the age limit when registering electric vehicles.

Mr Singh added: “Then there’s the charging, we wouldn’t want to stop working for a few hours to charge up.

"Do we leave the vehicles there? Do we stay with it? What if there are no free charging points?

“Taxi drivers don’t live in detached houses with big driveways, they live in flats or terraced houses or main roads where you can’t just leave your car plugged in.”

Another driver, John Rainer, added: “A better way of doing it would be for the council to buy a fleet of green vehicles and lease them to drivers, we could pay a rent on the cab.

“They can buy it, charge it and store it and we pay them to use it.”

The city council was one of 17 local authorities to successfully bid for funding from the £6 million pot to support new infrastructure for greener cleaner taxis.

The authority has said it will provide up to £100,000 of match funding for the scheme.

Councillor Adam Clarke, deputy city mayor for environment and public health, said: “Supporting a shift towards cleaner, greener transport is vital part of the city’s air quality action plan.

“We have already seen the positive impact that the clean air technology now being used by the city’s bus fleet is making.

“Now we want to see those benefits extended to the city’s hackney cabs. Ensuring that the necessary infrastructure is in place will be vital in helping local taxi operators make their fleets more environmentally-friendly.

“This new funding will help us accelerate the installation of new dedicated charging points for ultra-low emission taxis and is another important step towards achieving the city’s clean air ambitions.”

The council has already relaxed its policy that restricts the maximum age at which hackney cabs can operate to help encourage the take-up of electric taxis.Until March 31, 2019, drivers that want to make the change to electric vehicles will be offered a temporary relaxation on the age policy. So far 11 drivers have expressed an interest.

The council has also successfully bid for over £1.4milllion from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) towards a new grant scheme to encourage local companies and other organisations to green-up their fleet vehicles.

Taxi companies will be the main focus, with operators invited to bid for financial help to cover the cost difference between new diesel and new ultra-low emission vehicles.

The scheme is expected to launch in early spring and will offer grant of up to £10,000.

If Councils are keen to see Electric taxis then they should have a higher tariff purely for Leccy cars that reflects the extra cost burden of buying and running them for profit, the only trouble there though is those that demand greener vehicles won't want to pay any more for the privilege of using them....It's double standards with the ZEZ and LEZ zealots, they want it but only if someone else is forced to absorb the financial losses involved.

What is the saving on fuel?

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Grandad,

did we not have some figures for this on a thread about Edinburgh taxis ? it was less than the extra cost of the vehicle as I recall based on a 10 year lifespan

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

This is all just stupid and idiotic the way the press, and some drivers, are going on about this?

You have to build runways before planes can land on them, build roads before cars can run on them, docks before boats can dock in them, I could go on.

You cannot have a fleet of electric cars before you have adequate charging points, they have to come first.

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IDFIMH

And that is sometimes the reason we often have white elephants but not this time,we the trade have to pay through the nose to ply our business and in most cases as we will not be able to recoup our costs go out of business.