CAPITAL NEWS MAJOR TAXI INDUSTRY TIE UP SEES BOLT LINK WITH LONDON’S BLACK CABBIES


A major taxi industry tie-up has seen Bolt make London’s black cabs available on its app from Tuesday 25 April. Londoners using Bolt will now be able to order London’s iconic taxis to get around the capital as the firm introduces a ‘black cab’ category on the app. London’s cabbies have teamed up with mobility apps before, with FreeNow making the move after the acquisition of Hailo in 2019, but


Bolt is by far the largest platform to include them in its service. Bolt will add a £2 booking fee to the metered trip fare, which drivers will receive. On top of this, the firm will receive a £2 fee for each trip. Commission will be suspended for drivers brought into the scheme before 30 April 2023. After that, Bolt will charge the £2 commission from drivers on every trip. After the first six months on the


platform for cabbies who joined before 30 April 2023. Passengers will get 15 per cent off their first trip of up to £10.


Bolt hopes the announcement could help improve


relations


between black cabbies and ride- hailing services, which has long been strained. The firm launched in London in 2019 and currently operates in 19 other UK cities.


LONDON CABBIES’ GREEN AMBITIONS SLOWED BY POOR EV CHARGING SET-UP, WARN TAXI FIRMS


Taxi firms have called for more action from government and City Hall to address failures in London’s EV charging infrastructure, which they argue is slowing the transition to electric fleets. “There’s work


to be done on


infrastructure,” Liam Griffin, CEO of Addison Lee, told City A.M. “When we signed up to this, there were all sorts of promises of the amount of chargers


available in


London and they haven’t mater- ialised, so that’s affected some drivers’ appetite to take on EVs.” EV taxi sales have surged since 2018, when TfL introduced guidance that all new cabs must be “zero emissions capable.” However,


multiple groups


contacted by City A.M. argued that problems with the current charging set-up are slowing the move towards greener vehicles. Steve McNamara of the LTDA, said: “The availability of public charging points, particularly rapid charging points for ‘on the go’ charging, is a


PHTM JUNE 2023


big concern for taxi drivers as they need to know it’s viable to run an electric taxi commercially.” He added: “without action from City Hall and Government, the shortage will become more acute and risks slowing down the record pace of investment we are seeing currently in our sector.” Taxi firms told City A.M. that EV charge points are located in the most affluent areas of London and are often a significant distance from where cabbies live, adding time and delay to their journeys. “Drivers often tell me that accessing reliable charging near their homes is critical to their


decision to switch to an EV,” Andrew Brem, Uber’s UK general manager, said. “The truth is that the richest boroughs in London have the best access to charging.” Data from Uber and Freenow reveals that the most common areas London cabbies live are Tower Hamlets, Newham, Brent, Redbridge, Greenwich, Dartford and Barking and Dagenham. The top five boroughs for EV chargers are Westminster, Kens- ington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth, and Richmond, according to DfT data. Mariusz Zabrocki, Freenow’s UK general manager, said that it is a “paradoxical situation,” in which those with the most need for EV chargers are often the furthest away. “We definitely need to increase the number of chargers together with increasing vehicles, but I would say that’s been happening. But what hasn’t happened is placing them where they’re needed.”


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