Nissan shows the benefits of full-electric taxis

More and more car manufacturers are pledging to go electric (EV), one of which was Volvo. Then last week, France announced that no gasoline- and diesel-powered cars will be allowed to roam its streets starting 2040. Parallel to all these paradigm shift in the automotive scene, Nissan promotes its campaign towards global electric taxi revolution. 

Why taxis? According to an infographic from Nissan, the current number of EV cabs in the world today saves up to 90,835 tons of CO2 emissions every 4 years of service. That is a groundbreaking 82,404,149 kg of CO2. Take note, we are looking at just a fraction of the world with EV taxis here; imagine if all taxis in the planet go full-electric.

In fact, a Japanese taxi company in 2013 decided to convert its entire fuel-powered cab fleet to zero-emission Nissan LEAFs. It marked the first step in the said revolution, and was then followed by various countries in Europe, as well as Mexico and Jordan. Currently, 5 continents, 26 countries, and 113 cities are running Nissan LEAF and e-NV200 taxis.

A huge deduction in carbon emission itself should be enough to convince each and every driver there is. Yet, aside from that, switching to EVs gives us more of the pros too, as they are 40% cheaper to maintain compared to conventional cars with internal combustion engines (ICE). This is because there are less components in an EV than in an ICE-bearing vehicle.

What about the Philippines? Where are we in all these? 

In case you missed it, our country recently hosted the 1st ASEAN Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Summit. This is the first big step that the Philippines took ever since the campaign of switching to EVs began. The meeting granted the local government a number of EV units from Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi, which might suggest that EV taxi’s will also probably hit our streets, all in the right time.