Going Green Beyond Electric Cars: A Case for Taxis, Ride-Hail & PHV Operators

ustainable urban mobility — this is something on everyone’s mind: local-authorities, taxi, ride-hail and PHV operators, and consumers. Electric vehicles (EVs) are getting a lot of attention, as they can be a swift solution to emissions issues. But they are not a magic bullet solution to all our issues. Beyond reducing car emissions, we also need to radically rethink how we use cars, and taxi, ride-hail, and PHV operators have a big role in this shift.

Just around the corner in 2025, it is already expected that 10% of car sales globally will be EVs. Norway is leading this charge full speed; just this month, EV car sales made up 65% of car sales on their market.

Ride-hail and taxi companies, big and small, are making sweeping EV commitments, from Uber, Lyft, and Didi, to local companies, like Sherbet in London and Go Eco Cabs in Lyme Regis. When we turn our attention to the customer side of this, over a quarter of Brits are willing to pay more for an EV ride apparently.

Cities are pulling out their carrot and stick agents to spur this EV shift along. Albeit not new — low emissions zones are becoming increasingly common across the map as more and more cities roll them out. London just recently introduced a development bylaw that calls for all new residential and non-residential buildings to have charging docks.

These facts speak for themselves — city authorities, manufacturers, ride-hail and taxi service operators, and customers alike are all moving this EV shift.

WHY THE EV RUSH?

Countries like the UK are racing to meet carbon neutrality goals; by 2050 it’s aiming for carbon neutrality. While there are endless ways to categorise what is contributing to CO2 emissions, transportation is always listed as one of the largest contributors. When we zoom into transportation a bit more, we see that it isn’t aeroplanes or freight trucks that aren’t the biggest contributors there. It’s the mass accumulation of passenger cars.

With their population density and accumulation of destination points, cities are naturally a hot spot for not just carbon emissions, but the other tail problems of urban mobility like congestion, sound pollution, equitable urban space use, and street safety.

For local authorities, it’s their job to make the most urban space use among many competing needs in a quickly changing world — bike lanes, public spaces, outdoor commercial space that is more COVID safe to name just a few.

We see several cities pushing back on the priority cars have been given as they roll out not just low emission zones, but traffic regulation zones, even banning private cars use in some parts of cities.

So, if we were to swish a green magic wand to make all the cars in our cities electric, we would still have a long list of urban mobility challenges and the need for clean energy to charge them as the graph below illustrates.

ZOOMING OUT TO UNDERSTAND URBAN MOBILITY.

Imagine your city from a birds-eye view. Think about how much of its space is given to cars, parked or moving. In the case of London, five thousands kilometres of streetside space are given to parking while parking spaces make up nine square miles.

Read the whole article on Mileus.com.