Nissan e-NV200 Taxi Saves Fleets So Much Cash That It's Like Getting A License To Print Money Thoughts?
It sounds like the fleet is a little over a year old. That is a little soon to say if the savings won't get wiped out by premature battery death from all the quick charging. I don't think Leafs in NYC cab service fared very well. That said, I don't know anything about the e-NV200. Larger pack and active liquid cooling could make the battery more robust than in the Leaf.
Don't know what electric is in the UK, but petrol and diesel are both in the $8 gallon(US) range. So a Prius taxi doing 77k miles a year will be using over $12,000 worth of petrol.
I know a local realtor who is saving $5k-$6k per year on fuel costs. The more you drive the more you save except in places with way out of whack electricity prices. For Taxis, fuel is a big chunk of their costs. When the taxis are EVs though, not so much for most drivers.
Don't forget maintenance costs too. Taxis are saving big time on brake pad replacements as the pads are lasting a lot longer.
I'm no owner of a taxi company, but one things for sure ... anyone with enough salt to bring an EV taxi company up from nothing (or even from an existing company) would be savvy enough to have a traction pack warranted for both mileage & months. Plus, when that (likely) pack warranty runs out ... and it comes time to replace, Nissan gives a decent core value to the old pack (which gets reused) ... and costs per kWh are on there way down. EDIT surprisingly - the pack is similar in size to the Leaf !! Production version of Nissan's all-electric e-NV200 unveiled .
