Taxi firm scraps £3m electric car plan over council bus lane ‘snub’
A TAXI company was forced to scrap an investment worth £3m after Leeds City Council blocked its bid to bring a fleet of emissionfree electric cars to the city.
Arrow Taxis was on the verge of signing a contract with car giant Tesla to bring 30 electric cars to Leeds.
Tesla, run by tech billionaire Elon Musk, manufactures cars powered entirely by powerful electric batteries and which emit zero greenhouse gases.
Arrow said that the move would have kick-started an “electric taxi revolution” in Leeds and marked a massive step toward reducing the air quality problems currently being faced in the city.
However, the firm said it has been forced to abandon the plans due to council bosses’ refusal to allow the firm the same access to the city’s road network as other taxis.
Under current council rules, only so-called private hire taxis or black and white cabs can use Leeds’s bus lanes.
Arrow’s request that all taxi firms, not just itself, should be allowed access to these faster lanes if the vehicle in question was an electric car has been rejected by the council.
The row comes at a time when tension between the council and
Continued from front. taxi firms are running high. David Richmond, the chairman of Arrow Taxis, told The Yorkshire Post: “This would have been fantastic news for Leeds; it could have kickstarted an electric taxi revolution in the city, dramatically helping the air quality problems we are facing. Sadly we have now abandoned this idea 100 per cent due to the intransigence of Leeds City Council.
“You cannot expect us to invest that money only to have these cars stuck in traffic on Kirkstall Road while a ten-year-old diesel taxi goes chugging by in the bus lane. To justify this level of investment utilisation is imperative; sadly we were pushing against a closed door. To the average consumer, they just see a taxi as a taxi.”
Clean Air Zones are currently planned for Leeds which could see buses, taxis and lorries handed £100 fines in certain parts of the city. The council’s deputy leader Coun James Lewis said: “We have had some positive dialogue with Mr Richmond; however as he is aware private hire vehicles and Hackney carriages are subject to different sets of regulation so we have to treat them separately in terms of policy.
“Many of the issues raised here will be covered by the upcoming clean air zone consultation which starts on January 2; part of this will be talking to a range of fleet operators about how we can support them to transition to ultralow-emission vehicles, including fully electric.”