London Taxi Company opens £300M Coventry plant for electric cabs
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
That's the law. Great news for pollution in London and great news for the push towards electric vehicles in general.
Clean air can't come soon enough to London.
...which I always find rather ironic, considering it was the EU's lax standards for vehicle emissions that caused the problem in the first place, by allowing the proliferation of diesel vehicles!
The findings were that the intensity of the exposure was less of a problem. It was the length of time you were exposed. So sitting in a car, even with car filters, pretty much put you at greatest risk. Someone on a bicycle just moved through the congestion quicker. Sadly the walker dropped out of filming. I would suspect walking along busy routes should be avoided due to the speed at which you are traveling, but is still better than sitting in a car.
It hasn't happened since that first year... which is actually more worrying in some ways.
All new taxis. And Zero emission capable. Practically speaking, that means they must be at least plug-in hybrids. The new LTC/Geely TX5 cabs are actually hybrids with a ~70 mile electric range, not full electric vehicles as is sometimes reported.
I don't see why taxpayers should foot the bill for this, when most Londoners cannot afford to ride in London taxis (and use buses, tube or minicabs/Uber instead).
On the other hand, the "capable" may be weasel wording. It seems that the taxi being discussed is a hybrid with quite a short range (70 miles?). It can be recharged at a point, but can also be recharged via its petrol engine, which may run for lengthy periods if there are no quick charging points available (not many at the moment in London).
Seems like a smallish step in the right direction.
Plug-in hybrids with a decent electric range are even better.
It assumes these are "additional jobs" not substitute jobs. In reality the people employed would have probably been employed elsewhere if not for this plan.
And while only the very well off use taxis to travel regularly when they could use TfL, you'd be surprised at how many less well off people use them occasionally. Especially the elderly and disabled, due to the accessibility features of London taxis.
Nope. The maximum subsidy for a car is 4,500 per vehicle[0]. The article says they're offering 7,500 per car to taxi drivers.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/plug-in-car-van-grants/what-youll-get
Everyone benefits from cleaner air.
If a factory upstream is polluting and causing a village $200 of damage a year, and if it were possible to pay the factory $100 to reduce this pollution to a $50 impact, should the village not pay? They'll net $50 in benefit.
Devil's advocate argument of sorts, but one that focuses on the absolute.
Real-life is harder. What if some of the village are employed at the factory? What if the factory produces produces the village needs but costs far more elsewhere? What if the factory employs people from another nearby poor village and your village is a comparatively rich village?
Point is: Look for win-wins and an objective framework to work in, not for multiple parties anchoring around their single issue concerns, blinkered from the bigger picture.
Talking completely in general. Not verified figures in article either.
Pushing costs onto other people and then asking them to pay to mitigate them is extortion.
My comment was partly a negative reaction to yet another subsidy being paid to taxi drivers, who are already subsidised:
- Implicitly by having a monopoly on picking up from the street
- Implicitly by being able to drive in many bus lanes (there are no carpool lanes in the UK, so an empty taxi gets to use a lane that a family of 4 cannot)
- Explicitly through not having to pay the London congestion charge (~90MM GBP per year) even though they cause a disproportionate amount of congestion
These are only tangential to this issue, but I'd like to see the costs of London taxis internalized (i.e. paid for by taxi drivers) rather than put onto taxpayers or coming at the expense of other road users
The congestion charge would cost a regular driver ~4000GBP per year, and she can't drive in a bus lane. How much do London taxis pay in fees per year? About 200GBP, right?
What is this 'fortune' you talk about? I spent a few minutes searching online, and can't find any evidence of fees, other than an annual inspection and licence, which are low 3-digit numbers.
(I know nothing about the taxi business, this is my thoughts from the outside looking in so I welcome correction!)
Pollution was mentioned in the earlier story about these cabs being tested in extreme winter conditions.
A small diesel car driven once a week by a grandmother in the suburbs is much less of an issue than a diesel cab running constantly in the city centre.
There's various rules and technologies coming into force that should have a big impact.
They're some of the dirtiest, most polluting vehicles - and many are on central London streets constantly making deliveries, etc.
It would make sense to focus subsidies on getting these guys into electrics/hybrids first. Each diesel van off the road has a much bigger impact on air quality than, say, getting Grandma a subsidised Nissan LEAF.
"From 1 January 2018, all taxis licensed for the first time must be zero emission capable, while new diesel taxis will not be allowed in London."
What mileage does a taxi drive in one day? Say if the car could charge to 100% during the driver's lunch break, what range would it need to stay on electric all day?
That says 200 miles a day roughly, so with morning and lunch break and a 70 mile range it would be half to 2/3rds powered by electric. A lot would depend on how fast the car can charge.
(CNG has been an option for vehicles for ages, but for some reason never quite took off?)
That's not really true anymore. Wind power supplies double that of coal in the UK. It's gas, nuclear and wind with coal coming in 4th. Check out http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ for live figures.
You also have to think about when they will be consuming electricity, which will primarily be at night (taking a reasonable guess here) where the balance of wind and nuclear is even higher.