Better Place has been awarded a contract that will allow it to bring its electric taxis and battery switching stations to the San Francisco Bay area in 2011.
Taxis are a high-mileage, high-visibility segment that can serve as the on-ramp for technology transfer to the mass-market.
Over the next three years, the program will deploy and operate four battery switch stations in the San Francisco to San Jose corridor that supports a fleet of zero-emission, switchable taxis.
Tokyo Electric Taxi Project
This fleet will offer many thousands of Bay Area residents and visitors their first EV experience. The program also has the potential to help California and the Bay Area meet their aggressive energy and climate policy goals when scaled to the entire region.
This program will be developed in partnership with key regional stakeholders and organizations that are working together to build Bay Area EV leadership, including:
• Taxi operators and car sharing programs: Yellow Cab Cooperative, Yellow Checker Cab Inc.;
• Regional and state agencies: Bay Area Air Quality Management District
• Consumer and EV organizations: Plug-in America, AAA Northern California;
• Leading regional business/community organizations: Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Bay Area Council, Bay Area Climate Collaborative, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, and others;
• San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
Better Place has been successfully operating an EV taxi program in Tokyo, supported by the Japanese government. The pilot project began on April 26, in cooperation with Nihon Kotsu Co., Tokyo’s largest taxi operator, and focuses on the feasibility of an automated battery switch process as means for taxis to have instant, zero-emission, range extension. In the first 90 days of the trial, the EV taxis drove over 25,000 miles using battery switch as the primary means of “instant charge” or range extension.
