Taxi Driver Online

Electric taxi plan scrapped after row with Leeds City Council

Yorkshire Evening Post

A TAXI company was forced to scrap an investment worth £3m after Leeds City Council blocked its bid to bring a fleet of emission-free electric cars to the city. Arrow Taxis, based in Horsforth, was on the verge of signing a contract with electric car giant Tesla to bring 30 electric cars to the city, a move it said would have kick-started an “electric taxi revolution” in Leeds and marked a massive step toward reducing the air quality problems currently being faced in the city.

However the firm said it has been forced to abandon the plans entirely after council bosses refused to allow electric taxis to drive in bus lanes.

Under current council rules, only so-called Hackney carriages or black and white cabs can use Leeds’s bus lanes, with regular taxis, known as private hires, treated like regular cars. But Arrow’s request that all taxi firms, not just itself, should be allowed access to these faster lanes if the taxi were an electric car, was rejected by the council.

David Richmond, chairman of Arrow Taxis, told the YEP: “It has been our plan to purchase an extensive fleet of Tesla vehicles. “This would have been fantastic news for Leeds, it could have kick started an electric taxi revolution in the city, dramatically helping the air quality problems we are facing. “Sadly we have now abandoned this idea 100 per cent due to the intransigence of Leeds City Council. “You cannot expect us to invest that money only to have these cars stuck in traffic on Kirkstall Road while a 10-year-old diesel taxi goes chugging by in the bus lane.

“To justify this level of investment utilisation is imperative, sadly we were pushing against a closed door. “To the average consumer they just see a taxi as a taxi. No-one says, ‘I am going to get a private hire vehicle to the restaurant’. It’s madness.”

Tesla, run by tech billionaire Elon Musk, manufactures luxury cars powered entirely by powerful electric batteries and which emit zero greenhouse gases. The cars are among the most sought-after motor cars in the world and increasingly becoming available in the UK. Mr Richmond said he and his firm had been to Amsterdam to negotiate the deal with Tesla, with each car costing £75,000 plus VAT and had the deal virtually all sewn up before having the rug pulled by the council.

Councillor James Lewis said: “We have had some positive dialogue with Mr Richmond, however as he is aware private hire vehicles and Hackney carriages are subject to different sets of regulation so we have to treat them separately in terms of policy. “Many of the issues raised here will be covered by the upcoming clean air zone consultation which starts on January 2, part of this will be talking to a range of fleet operators about how we can support them to transition to ultra-low emissions vehicles, including fully electric.”

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IDFIMH

Personally I couldn't agree more.

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IDFIMH

Utter bo*****ks.

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IDFIMH

Musk and Richmond do not give a toss to the human suffering to obtain the mined rock for the batteries.

Did a £3 million investment really depend on access to the bus lanes?

If the cars had been a lot cheaper then it might have looked like a back door way to get hackney plates, but nobody's going to invest in £100k cars to gain access to the ranks either.

They could always look into investing in the all electric London taxi. Then they could be hackney plated and use the bus lanes and save about £35,000 per vehicle.

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Grandad,

However the firm said it has been forced to abandon the plans entirely after council bosses refused to allow electric taxis to drive in bus lanes.

No I think what you were doing is offering to put 30 electric cars on in exchange for allowing several thousand PH cars into the bus lanes and the council saw through you

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

As I said a couple of years ago, suspected at the time that the investment in electric cars wasn't really dependent on bus lane access, and that they were just trying to make it sound that way to get access


Leeds' Arrow Cars replaces all its taxis with Tesla electric vehicles

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/busines ... 1-10261317

A Leeds taxi firm is to invest more than £5m in what will be the city’s first all-electric fleet of vehicles.
Arrow Cars, based in Horsforth, is to replace its current fleet of taxis with Tesla Series 3 vehicles in order to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Arrow said it was making the move in response to consumer demand for sustainable travel and hopes to complete the move by 2024.

The firm had planned to invest in the emission free fleet three years ago but scrapped the plan after Leeds City Council bosses rejected its request that the vehicles be allowed access to the city’s bus lanes.

However, Arrow, which employs 750 drivers nationwide across five cities, has now decided to go ahead with the plan regardless, with the first Teslas to begin service from next month.

Daniel Graham, managing director with Arrow Cars, said: “Electric cars are not something for the future, this is actually happening now.

“We wanted to offer our customers something different from the diesel-guzzling cars. Whether it is our corporate customers, their clients or individuals, there is a push for everything to be more sustainable. This is not an insignificant investment.”

The Government has made a commitment to phase out all petrol and diesel cars, with the sale of combustion engine-powered cars and vans to end by 2035.

Mr Graham said he believed that the move from Arrow would lead to other rival firms following suit and investing in electric cars to service their passengers.

Currently, only so-called private hire taxis, or black and white cabs, can use the bus lanes in Leeds.

Mr Graham said that he and his firm remained frustrated at the refusal of the council to give them the green light to use the bus lane network in 2017, something he said could have contributed to thousands of emission-free journeys.

“We are not asking for something totally unreasonable or that is not happening anywhere else,” he said.

“Other UK cities allow electric vehicles into bus lanes. If you think about the number of other companies that would followed us that would have been thousands of emission free journeys.

“But it is great that Leeds is finally kicking off this process and all being well we will soon have a zero emission fleet. It is a lot of money but we have always invested as a firm.”

Tesla the business and the vehicles it produces are the brainchild of tech billionaire Elon Musk. Earlier this month it was accused of removing £6,000 ($8,000) worth of driver aid functions from a car after it was sold on the second-hand market.

The electric car maker remotely disabled two driver aid functions – Enhanced Autopilot and so-called Full Self Driving capability (FSD) – after the car had changed hands, despite advertising it as having the features.

A spokesperson for Leeds City Council said: “The council’s position is that bus lanes should be kept clear for buses to run efficiently and to time.

“This is a key element of our target to double bus use by 2027 through investment in improved public transport infrastructure.

“We would advise any private hire company to visit our clean air website at https://www.leeds.gov.uk/cleanairzone or contact our clean air team at cleanairleeds@leeds.gov.uk to look at the support available for converting their vehicle fleets ahead of the clear air zone being introduced.”

Presumably written by someone who thinks the black and white HCs in Leeds are 'private hire taxis'?

Maybe more accurate to miss out the words in brackets?

I wonder how much they'll be charging a week for them?