IN THE NEWS
ENGINEER BEGINS JOURNEY TO PRODUCING FLEET OF ELECTRIC TAXIS
An engineer from Henley hopes to help tackle air pol- lution by building and selling electric taxis. The Henley Stan- dard reports that Alex Howard is about to produce his first prototype and hopes to test it on the road later this year. Dr Howard, who works for an audio- visual
installation
firm, and his busi- ness partner Jan- osch Oppermann, a freelance software engineer, converted an old black cab in the garage at Dr Howard’s childhood home in Rotherfield Road, where his parents Alan and Irene still live. The pair had been introduced at a party
by the
Howards’ neigh- bour Chris Meachin, amutual friend who was aware of their shared passion for electric transport. They came up with their idea about 18 months ago and began converting the 17-year-old taxi, which they bought in London for £1,000. They ripped out the diesel engine and installed an electric equivalent from a Nissan LEAF van. They also installed 48 battery cells, which together can power the vehicle for a journey of about 90 miles.
60
Dr Howard and Mr Oppermann, who will trade as Clipper A u t o m o t i v e , worked on the pro- ject one day a week, using tools belonging to Dr Howard’s father, a retired electronics engineer. During the lock- down they were able to get more work done as Dr Howard was fur- loughed from his day job. They have ap- proached several taxi licensing auth- orities,
including
Reading Borough Council, offering free use of the vehi- cle so that they can assess its perfor- mance. If it proves viable they may try to get it approved for use in London and seek investment to pro- duce more vehicles with a better range. Eventually
they
want to build their own cabs from scratch as convert- ed vehicles have a limited shelf life. Although “hybrid” taxis already exist, with diesel and electric engines, the men say drivers often rely on the former so their po- tential benefit goes unrealised. Their
prototype
cost £12,000 com- pared with the £70,000 cost of a hybrid and they believe they could make a new-build
sold as scrap. Then we could put the new engine in and there are a lot of complexities
like
integrating it with the brakes and steering
or
electric for less. Dr Howard, who attended Trinity Pri- mary School then Gillotts School in Henley, sat a degree in mechanical engi- neering at Durham University then a doctorate at the University Manchester
of Insti-
tute of Science and Technology. He now lives in Lon- don with his wife and two children but
regularly
returns to Henley. He said: “I’d been thinking about con- verting vehicles to electric for a while and
so had
Janosch, so it was just great to meet him and finally get it off the ground. It’s not the sort of thing you can easily do on your own. “It has been frus- trating only having one day a week to fit this around our lives and we really want to accelerate everything and get funds together to launch as a proper business. sense,
In that the lock-
down has been helpful as before
we’d meet up and work until we were too tired to keep going. “We’re now well on the way to proving our concept and that’s an important first step, although we’re still only on the ‘lower slopes’ overall.” The pair learned how to build an electric car using online tutorials and YouTube videos. Dr Howard said: “I’d done a bit of research and, as an engineer, the con- cepts aren’t totally foreign but we didn’t know any- thing about
the
automotive side of things. “We basically had to school ourselves and the internet is a wonderful thing for that. You can dig up technical manuals and there’s a huge community of hob- byists who’ve done all sorts of projects and posted videos of the results. “We had to strip everything out — the engine, exhaust system, diesel tank and so on,whichwe
installing air condi- tioning. It has been good fun but it’s hard work. There’s a lot left to do but we’re really pas- sionate
about
making things hap- pen and turning this into a viable prod- uct. “When we see our taxis rolling around the streets, we’ll feel a real sense of achievement.” He said his vehicle could reduce air pollution in towns like Henley, where levels of harmful nitrogen dioxide and fuel particu- lates have been well above the recom- mended safe limit for many years. Dr Howard added: “I’m bringing up children in a city and I’ve been horri- fied by the science that’s been increas- ingly coming out around air pollution and the damage it causes. “I really want to do something about it and wish I’d been at this point some years earlier. “I’m very thankful to my parents for the use of their garage.
It hadn’t
been in use for a while so it was an excuse to do more
with it, though we did break several of my dad’s tools in the process. “They’ve been in- credibly supportive and we couldn’t have got this far without
them.
We’re going to need a bit of invest- ment
to keep
pushing it forward but there is defi- nitely a need for something like this.” Mr Oppermann said: “When we were first
intro-
duced, Mr Meachin told us to go for a pint
together
because we were talking about elec- tric cars so much that he didn’t want to hear any more. “It all went from there and it has huge promise be- cause if you look at high-speed tests they’re doing in America, electric cars are starting to outperform con- ventional ones so they will be phased out eventually. “We’re very driven by a need to improve the envi- ronment as we’ve got some of the worst air quality levels in Europe and taxis are one of the biggest polluters.” The first fully elec- tric
taxis in
London’s history, made by a firm based in Coventry, were approved for use by Transport for London in Novem- ber.
JULY 2020
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