Coping with a growing number of e-taxis in Greater Stockholm: A stated adaptation approach

Abstract

The introduction of electric vehicles in taxi companies has shown that operating electric taxis can be profitable and useful already under current circumstances. However, a significant future increase of electric taxis within relatively short time could impose severe challenges to the system. In this paper, current charging patterns and demand for electric taxi rides were analysed to design future scenarios with a significantly higher number of electric taxis and changes in fast charging technology and pricing. A qualitative stated adaptation experiment was carried out among taxi drivers and carriers in order to explore important human factors for coping with changing driving and charging conditions in scenarios with significantly more electric taxis or potential policy changes. The main findings are that hired drivers and carriers react differently to temporal price differentiation. Hired drivers make more use of faster but more expensive charging infrastructure than carriers do. Speed and convenience of charging events seems to be more important for hired drivers than for carriers. An increasing number of electric taxis is likely to increase the strains on urban public charging infrastructure, thereby stimulating charging at home or at currently less popular charging infrastructure. Moreover, there is a risk that the already existing imbalance between carriers and hired drivers could escalate in the future.