Dubai may discontinue its taxi hybrid electric engine scheme in September after it emerged that the cost of procurement is too high to make the scheme viable.
A three year pilot scheme comes to the end in September with the original fleet halved from ten to five vehicles. According to a report in the Khaleej Times the RTA is now looking at alternatives such as CNG to green its 6,000-strong fleet.
“We are very happy with the result of the project. The performance of Toyota vehicles was particularly impressive. But the problem lies in the initial upfront cost of acquiring the vehicles, the price of a hybrid taxi is double that of the normal ones and this is the biggest hindrance,” explained Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan, CEO of RTA’s Licensing Agency and chief of the committee that is overseeing the Hybrid Taxi project.
“Commercially, it is not profitable to run these vehicles under the current fare regime so it is difficult to convince the operators to run them without much profit,” he continued. “At this point of time, we don’t have a clear idea about our next step, but we are working with manufacturers to absorb the upfront cost of hybrid taxis somehow. We are trying to work out different financing models and hopefully something will work out soon.”
