In this blog: Yellow Taxi's first electric vehicles is officially in service.
Now one, later one hundred and one and then more. We're catching up on the trend and we have our first electric taxi in Sofia – KIA Soul EV by Yellow Taxi. Now it's time for others to move in and let there be much more electric taxis to move us around bulgarian cities in the years to come...
Initially (back in August and September), still in the original white color, the electric Soul went through a demo campaign with free rides, but now the car is an official yellow taxi. They kept all the light blue accents which helps in recognizing the electric taxi on the streets.
Now in the traditional for taxis yellow color, this is the first all electric taxi in Sofia so far. We're yet to get Soul EV for a thorough test, but we're under impression that moderate driving can get you range of something like 170 km per charge. Or if you stay below 70 km/h (which is well achievable in the cities) you could squeeze up to 190 km and maybe even slightly more.
Most of the Bulgarian taxis are already converted to LPG or CNG making them less polutting then the diesel cars, but electric is completely different as Yellow Taxi's drivers confirm first hand. There's no vibrations in the car, the driving experience is very solid and we're very curious to know what first electric taxi customer think about it.
From personal experience I know that once people hop into an EV their perceptions instantly change – yes, I'll be asking guys from Yellow Taxi what people are saying.
We're friends so they'll share for sure, and that reminds me that they also installed a charging station at their HQ, where every EV owner can charge for free. It's a Type 2 socket device capable of charging at up to 22 kW (AC). Sadly KIA Soul EV's onboars charger is only good for 6.6 kW, which means the car is not capable of using the full power of the such charging station, like Renault ZOE, Smart ForTwo or Tesla Model S can.
OK so this is how it all starts for us about the electric taxis in Sofia and I expect that other taxi companies will follow suit – let's talk again about it next spring, when I hope there will be more e-taxis from different brands – both producers and operators.
