Taxi Leaks Exclusive : Dynamo Electric Taxi, On The Road... by David Brown

David Brown manages Brown’s Taxis In Marlborough. 

As promised to the Dynamo owners group on Facebook, below are David's figures from his trip to ‘The Kensington Hotel’ yesterday. 

David started with a full charge, left at 0900 hrs, did a quick local town job, then had to drive 10 miles to pick up his customer.

He arrived at the destination hotel having done 85 miles with 78 miles range and 41% of the battery left.  

Heading home I decided to stop at Slough Tesco podpoint for a rapid charge and a comfort break. 

104 miles done, 43 miles range, 26% battery left. Charged for 33 mins back to 79% battery with 125 miles range. Cost £4.56 for 19 kWh.

Arrived home at 13:45 hrs, 160 miles done, 38 miles range & 28% battery left.  

Plugged into my home charger and left it to fully charge. 28.3 kWh costing £2.98 (approx 5 hours).

So in summary, for the 160 miles travelled in just under 5 hours (with a 30 min break included whilst charging) cost me in total £7.54 electric.

3.6 miles per kWh (around town it's normally 4-5)

4 hr 16 mins driving time

Avg speed 37.4 mph

5.9 kWh battery regenerated (13%)

If I'd done this journey in one of my diesel cars, it would have cost approx £22 in fuel.

TAXI LEAKS COMMENTS:

Technically it’s not the Dynamo taxi, it’s a Nissan e-NV200 being used as a hackney carriage in Wiltshire.

Steve Lodge; 

My only fear with this as a London driver ,has nothing to do with the dynamo but with the lack of rapid chargers in place. 

TfL have not kept there side of the bargain and I’v know a couple of drivers who have TXEs and are saying its getting harder to find one you and when you do, you can get on. If that's already happening with only 2000 cabs on the road can you imagine what it's going to get like over the next couple of years?

Russell Simmons;

I had a bloke in the cab from Islington council and he said the problem we have with chargers which was never thought about by the government, is you will need so many in the end it will become like a car park. 

Now as he emphasised you know what councils policies are on parking ! 

You’ll pay to charge for the hour which won’t be cheap so he said people’s savings will be virtually non existent. 

I believe residents in Westminster have opposed to having them outside their million pound houses.

TAXI LEAKS;

Westminster now have a policy that electric vehicles only pay for the first 10 minutes of parking up to 2 hours. It is believed that other inner London boroughs could follow Westminster lead. 

Trevor Joel;

In that 30 minute break you could have done two £10 jobs so let’s forget about savings we need as little downtime as possible if your investing more money you need to be earning more simple as that

David Brown;

To carry out your job safely you need to be taking adequate breaks in my opinion.

I don't do more than 2-3 hours driving without having at least a 15 min rest stop.