Empirical Evaluation of the Performance of Electric Vehicles for Taxi Operation

Abstract

Electric mobility with all of its advantages has gained momentum during the last decade with increasing utilization by many sectors of the society. However, professional fleets 19 operators (e.g. taxis) are still conservative in switching to this new mobility paradigm. In this paper, we empirically evaluate whether electric vehicles together with normal charging speeds could replace current internal combustion engine vehicles for taxi mobility and study the implications for the taxi business. To perform this study we resort to a detailed and large mobility dataset of a taxi fleet collected in a mid-sized European city. The results provide a first indication that such transition towards electric mobility is feasible for the vast majority of the vehicles of the fleet and that simple AC chargers at taxi stands could suffice to provide the necessary range autonomy.