Electric Cars are failing with Taxi Drivers

According to the article, "Mexico only recently relinquished the ubiquitous VW Bug." from taxi service
Maybe that's one country where the CODA would be an improvement!!

 

James- Good post, very useful info for towns considering EV taxi forces. I actually agree with much of your logic. Not much oil is burned for electric, so I was not following your point about EV's burning more oil. Obvioulsy energy is a "heated" topic these days with many strong opinions on all sides. I encourage you to continue to develop your own philosophy, heck that's what I am doing too.

 

Above is debunked by
Myth vs. Reality - Electric Vehicles - Sierra Club
.

From Energy and You | Clean Energy | US EPA, only 3% of electricity comes from oil.

Refining oil requires more electricity than EVs | PluginCars.com has some discussion about energy input needed to refine oil.

 

I've got this really weird and odd idea here. Please go easy on me but;

Has anyone actually bothered to ask the taxi driver what they'd want, what would be useful to them, and what sort of driving they do?

Just a thought

 

I'm pretty sure the above plan is TOAST given that Better Place shuts down Palo Alto location, ceases U.S. operations - Silicon Valley Business Journal. Before that, I stumbled across FEV, Inc. v. CODA Automotive, Inc. :: Justia Dockets & Filings. FEV is the company mentioned in the article you linked to.

So much for grant $ down the tubes. What a ridiculous use of $3 million for FOUR crappy EV taxis, engineering work and trying to build swapping stations. (I test drove a Coda last year at Alt Car Expo and was underwhelmed: unrefined, weird braking and regen, noisy drivetrain and subpar interior.)

That $ would've been better spent on a bunch of Leafs and CHAdeMO charging stations or a bunch of Tesla Model S cars and Superchargers. It doesn't get as cold here in the Bay Area as some parts of Japan.

I predict Coda will go bankrupt and either cease to exist or be bought out by someone by the end of 2013. They seem to be having probs paying their bills (UQM writes off Coda, piling on doubts of Coda's survival). I also discovered DB 2-11 Notice Of Warehouse Lien Sale Please take notice that, in accordance with California Commercial... - Torrance Daily Breeze Classifieds not long ago (you'll need to select and copy/paste the ad text to read it).

Coda's never released sales figures but many believe they haven't even sold 100 cars. I'll be more generous and say less than 200.

I had to LOL when I stumbled across and old story from 2010 at Coda Unveils Electric Car Pricing at $45K, Above Volt & LEAF — Tech News and Analysis .

There's been a bunch of discussion about the original story (Osaka's great EV taxi experiment does a slow burnout ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion) on the SF BayLeafs FB page and MNL. As I posted at MNL:

There's basically no "free" waste heat with an EV. On the '11/'12 Leaf, it's dependent on a power hungry resistive heater. The '13 Leaf has an optional heat-pump based heater which should be less power hungry.

I think you've got the wrong idea about the size of Coda's car, see CODA Electric Vehicle, Electric Cars, Zero Emissions EV Car, Electric Vehicles | CODA Automotive.

 

Using a short range, first generation EV for a taxi makes as much sense as using a motorcycle for a taxi. The key word in this whole affair is "subsidized". That instantly tells the reader that the whole concept does not work economically. Unfortunately, like most EV articles, the difference between an economically flawed plan and a technology flaw is not understood.

 

No.

I know what a Coda looks like and it would struggle to be licenced as a taxi here in the UK, let alone in the US where you like your cars bigger. The Leaf was just acceptable because it was a hatchback. One requirement here is that the car can carry a folded wheelchair which in the Leaf could be loaded vertically. They only just fit in the Prius horizontally and the Coda looks smaller.

Someone hit on a taxi issue earlier about where doors are always opened and closed letting the heat out. Often they leave the door open whilst waiting for their partner to enter. In an EV you'd be forever heating the car. Same applies in summer if you use a/c but normally it's better just to have the windows down.

 

I disagree. It doesn't work on a number of fronts. An earlier post tried to show how much money has to be earnt in an hour to break even. You can only squeeze a couple of jobs into that hour if you're lucky.

Unless you are a busy inner city taxi where your costs will be much higher, you are unlikely to get more than two jobs an hour off the ranks. You also have to allow time to return to the rank. The same applies to telephone bookings, time to get there, load, head to destination, unload, return to an area where there are likely to be more jobs. You're lucky to do that in 30 minutes. In an EV where range is an issue, you could become stuck.

A Tesla would be fine as a taxi but I can't see too many taxi drivers queuing up to pay the sort of money they demand. Oh, and Tesla UK prices are madness, starting at £60,000+ ($90,000!).

 

Do Taxi drivers naturally group into a small number of common drive profiles? i.e. airport shuttle, rural, urban, hotel, and long haul?

Pedicabs have expanded rapidly in my local, much to the dismay of the regular taxi business. It's a bit odd because the taxi drivers were constantly complaining about having to cater to roudy patrons in the evenings. That roudy crowd is a focus of business for the pedicabs, shuttling between bars, music venues, and hotels. SXSW exhausted our taxi ranks a few years ago.

 

I looked at these for possible mail car use which is what I use my Prius Gen 2 for. Battery issues and miles per charge varies with weather and and then this on top of that...I'd need 2 or 3 to make the day's route. The Prius is still the best thing going unless you drive 20 miles a day.

 

I think we all would agree that electronic mail is more appropriate than electronic vehicles for mail delivery.

 

Until you figure out how to get an electronic package shipped we're stuck. Good point but I don't see the mail going away altogether.

 

I agree with what you say entirely. My point was that subsidization is needed to make up for all the failings. Your experience identifies those failings in detail.

 

How many miles did the taxis put on their batteries before the degradation advanced to a point of being inconvenient?
What was the fuel economy of the vehicles that they replaced?
How much would it cost to replace all or part of the batteries to restore sufficient range?

God I hate journalism. Do some actual smart research and give us the numbers.

As Grumpy points out cabbies will be able to give you proper information on needs. Don't ask the leasing companies because they make profits by smart the cabbies over. (See the use of Grand Vics in NYC which had everything to do with the low purchase price of used vehicles being effectively subsidized by police use and nothing to do with being the ideal for the people who actually drive them. NYC is actually one of the worst places to have Grand Vic cabs because the average mileage is very high).

Oh, 7 times the number of power stations? What are these people smoking? There's already plenty of capacity to serve the vast majority of transportation needs. You just need proper electricity pricing and taxation so people don't use excessive opportunity charging. PEVs just help make grids better and electricity cheaper.

 

...3D printers?

 

Varies by town to town, city to city and country to country.

My use profile was just totally random. Dispatched automatically by our gps computer booking system which tracked all cars and allocated the next job to the nearest car. A typical start to a shift could be as follows; A couple of quick turn around fares with no more than a couple miles each (where an EV would excel), then a random trip 25 miles to the next city, return and do a school run half way on the way back to my home town, then the local train gets cancelled as you're passing the station, so back over to the next city again to drop someone at the main rail hub. Whilst there you have a telephone booking to collect someone from that station back to your home town. That could be a few hours work and you're upto 110 miles. Do you refuse the first rail job? or turn down the regular telephone booking on the return trip because you need to find a charge? Both of those could be worth £25-£30 each.

Some days I would struggle to cover 100 miles, other days I could exceed 300. What is saved on petrol with an EV is spent on loss of income charging and turning down certain jobs to allow a safety buffer to allow charging. Run out of charge and the customer misses a flight, you could be classed as negligent and end up being sued.

 

How do you deliver the 3D printer, electronically?

 

sounds like the computerized gps dispatching system could be upgraded to manage the capabilities of the available fleet. Does dispatch already manage things like maximum number of passengers, cargo space, etc ... ?

 

Not going to send the wife a box of chocolates that way!!!

 

Looks like I'm going to have a job for a while, eh guys? LOL