The return on investment for taxi companies transitioning to electric vehicles: A case study in San Francisco

Transportation (2014) 41:785818

DOI 10.1007/s11116-013-9486-1

Published online: 21 June 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract We study whether taxi companies can simultaneously save petroleum and money by transitioning to electric vehicles. We propose a process to compute the return on investment of transitioning a taxi corporations eet to electric vehicles. We use Bayesian data analysis to infer the revenue changes associated with the transition. We do not make any assumptions about the vehicles mobility patterns; instead, we use a time-series of GPS coordinates of the companys existing petroleum-based vehicles to derive our conclusions. As a case study, we apply our process to a major taxi corporation, Yellow Cab San Francisco (YCSF). Using current prices, we nd that transitioning their eet to battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is protable for the company. Furthermore, given that gasoline prices in San Francisco are only 5.4 % higher than the rest of the United States, but electricity prices are 75 % higher; taxi companies with similar practices and mobility patterns in other cities are likely to prot more than YCSF by transitioning to electric vehicles.

Keywords Electric vehicles Bayesian networks Public transportation Taxis

Introduction

Replacing standard petroleum taxis with electric vehicles (EVs) can save signicant amounts of petroleum. For triple-shift taxis (those that are driven 24 h a day) we estimate savings of approximately 15,000 l each year per taxi, and 10,000 l for double-shift (16 h a

T. Carpenter (&) A. R. Curtis S. Keshav

School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canadae-mail: [email protected]

A. R. Curtise-mail: [email protected]

S. Keshave-mail: [email protected]

The return on investment for taxi companies transitioning to electric vehicles

A case study in San Francisco

Tommy Carpenter Andrew R. Curtis S. Keshav

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786 Transportation (2014) 41:785818

day) taxis. However, taxi operators will only invest in EVs if it is economically viable. Therefore, we design a process to determine a taxi companys ROI in transitioning to electric vehicles. We rst build a Bayesian model of taxi eet mobility. We then show how to use the model to determine the return on investment (ROI).

Existing research on transitioning petroleum vehicles to EVs has focused on bus transit and personally owned vehicles. Taxis do...