California wants more EVs for Uber and Lyft, and may have a plan to make that happen. Despite the ongoing pandemic, though, California believes now is the time for Uber and Lyft to get their act together environmentally.
South Korea’s capital, Seoul, is purchasing 700 electric taxis. This subsidy is worth 18.2 million won (around $15,000) per EV, far more than the 12.7 million ($10,300) subsidy for buying an EV for personal use. Seoul is making foreign manufacturers, not only Korean brands, eligible for funding.
The biggest, hottest, most enticing CleanTechnica stories last week were led by Sony unveiling an electric car, the impossible-to-comprehend scale of this month’s Australian wildfires, and a solar energy storage device from the 1980s that has come back to life. You may have noticed something unusual by now — there wasn’t a single Tesla story in the top 3! That’s the first time in a long time, and ironic considering that Tesla stock [TSLA] went bonkers last week (and is still going bonkers).
There is a taxi company in Canada called Current Taxi. It has an all-electric fleet, or should we say, an all-Tesla fleet. The company is now hiring drivers. One of the perks, of course, is that you get to drive a Tesla. Current Taxi’s goals is to change the way of the taxi industry one ride at a time.
Kaptyn, a Transportations as a Service (TaaS) technology company in Las Vegas, today launched 30 Teslas in its on-demand transportation (i.e., taxi) service in Vegas. Initially, I thought, “That’s a big order. We should probably cover that.” As I jumped into the story, though, I saw it was about much more than 30 Teslas.
BYD is electrifying Bali and Jakarta with a new order for a fleet of 200 of BYD’s fully electric T3 vans from the operator of the largest taxi network in Indonesia, PT Blue Bird Tbk. The new order is the largest order for fully electric taxis in history in Indonesia and also sets a new record for BYD for its electric vans outside of China.
The City of Colón, Panama is taking a step into the future with the procurement of a fleet of 1,500 fully electric BYD e6 taxis. The new vehicles were purchased in partnership with ENSA Servicios and TRASERVI and were joined by the first fast charging station in Colón province.
After using an Opel Ampera-E for a year as a taxi in Oslo, Norway, the owner found the car costs less than a quarter as much to operate compared to the Toyota Prius he drove previously and more convinced than ever that the future is electric.
It seems no matter how we feel or what we want, autonomous vehicles (AV) are coming sooner than later. And the obvious first market is taxis.
The London Taxi Company’s all-electric taxi has been tested intensely and over thousands of miles in both hot and cold climate endurance tests in the Arizona desert and Arctic Circle. This week, the zero emissions taxi prototype took on another first. On Thursday, June 29, one of London Taxi Company (LTC)’s all-new range-extended electric taxi test vehicles silently made the world-famous Goodwood Hillclimb.
