GREEN MEANS GO
SHEFFIELD’S BIGGEST TAXI FIRM HAS UNVEILED £50M PLANS TO ROLL OUT 1,500 NEW CARS
City Taxis in Sheffield is set to make the radical shift in a link-up with French car giant Nissan-Renault. It comes after plans were announced for a Clean Air Zone in Sheffield city centre charging £10-a-day for the most pollut- ing vehicles and £50 for buses. City bosses say they handle at least 20,000 bookings a week inside the pro- posed area and doing nothing would force them to put up fares, leading to a drop in journeys. That would harm the firm, the drivers and the economy. Managing director Arnie Singh said the
switch, by 2025, would not just improve the city’s air but its interna- tional image. The link-up with Nis- san-Renault came after City’s software supplier iCabbi was snapped up by the car maker’s banking arm RCI Banque. Mr Singh then dis- cussed the potential supply of 1,500 cars on a visit to Renault’s futuristic vehicle labs near Paris. The scheme hinges on the success of a pilot of seven elec- tric Nissan Leafs. But bosses are suffi- ciently confident that a public launch of the scheme was held at the Crucible
Arnie Singh, MD of City Taxis in Sheffield.
on Friday 13 Decem- ber, with represent- atives from iCabbi, RCI Banque and Sheffield City Coun- cil.
Under the plan, up to 12 rapid-charging hubs in shipping containers would be installed around the city. The £120,000 units, which can charge up to ten cars at a time,
would be open to the public and have Wi-Fi, a toilet and coffee facilities. City is in talks with Sheffield City Coun- cil about their location, Mr Singh said. Drivers would pay for the cars over a fixed preriod, but their costs would be lower because they were no longer pay-
ing for fuel, he added. Cllr Bob Johnson, cabinet member for transport and devel- opment at Sheffield City Council, said the authority would do “everything it can” to make the project a success. He added: “The changes will make a big difference in reducing harmful air pollution in the city. “It’s Sheffield’s am- bition to move to- wards an ultra-low emissions taxi fleet and we need to sup- port this by making sure that there are rapid charging points available for the drivers to recharge their vehi- cles. In the new year
we will install 22 charge points with capacity for 44 vehi- cles. We have been talking to taxi drivers to make sure they’re located in the right place.” Sheffield’s proposed CAZ is set to be introduced in early 2021 and apply to all non-compliant vehi- cles within, or on, the ring road. City hopes to have 700 EVs on the road by then. Mr Singh led a man- agement buy-out a year ago. He has presided over a big tech push that has included an app, automated phone bookings and a takeaway
food delivery service.
POP-UP ELECTRIC CAR CHARGING POINT TRIALS UNDERWAY IN OXFORD
One of the chief obstacles to mass uptake of EVs is being addressed in trials of “pop-up” charging points, designed for use in residential areas by drivers who have no access to off-street parking. Oxford City Council will assess the via- bility of the new type of charging point in a pilot pro- gramme that will run until February 2020. Urban Electric, which manufactures the “OxPop” charging points, says the sys- tem allows EV drivers to “charge conveniently over-
night in the street where you live”. The 7kW output is similar to that of a domestic wall box charger but its ad- vantage is in being able to retract into the ground when not in use, thereby reducing pavement clutter. The maker says this means ped- estrians and wheel- chair users on narrow footpaths won’t have to navi- gate around fixed charging points when not in use. Oxford City Council says the retractable nature of the points also means they negate the need for
JANUARY 2020
parking spaces re- served only for EVs. While the OxPops will be free to use during the trial peri- od, only local residents who have successfully applied to take part in the pilot programme will have access to them. The council
has also secured the use of a pure-elec- tric BMW i3 city car for the duration of the trial, in order to ensure people who “are not ready to lease or purchase an electric car out- right” can still participate. The council con-
cedes that this isn’t a one-size-fit-all solution for EV own- ers who only have access to on-street parking. When final- ising where to install the points at the Lonsdale Road trial site in northern Oxford, the council says it had to shelve plans to place them in the middle of the residential street, due to the number of dropped kerbs and street lights in that particular area. The pop-up points aren’t the only on- street EV charging idea being trialled by Oxford City Council. Options
also being assessed include larger, non- retractable points that can recharge two vehicles at once and lamp post- based installations similar to those rolled out across Southwark in Lon- don last November. Less advanced alter- natives are being put through their paces, too. One such solution involves digging a gully into the pavement, mean- ing EV owners can recharge their vehi- cle at home using an extra-long cable without the risk of pedestrians tripping over it.
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