TALAKO (Taxi Charging Concept for the Public Space)

Press release

Project description

CO2, NOx and fine dust of vehicles with internal combustion engines add to the air pollution in urban areas and cities. As a result, an increasing number of cities want to reduce the environmental load caused by gasoline or diesel engines. One important contributor are taxi fleets, that are equipped by about 85 % with diesel engines and mostly operate in urban areas. An electrification of these urban taxis could solve this problem.

In public areas (e.g. in front of train stations), taxis usually have to wait in line with a continuous advancement in their positions for their customers. This advancement principle prevents conductive charging systems. To overcome this problem the chair of “Internationales Automobilmanagement” of the University Duisburg-Essen initiated an innovative pilot project called “TALAKO”, which started on the first of October 2019 and runs for three years with a promotional volume of 2 Million Euros. The project comprises a pilot system for wireless inductive charging, that is embedded in the road surface in the city of Cologne for the lined-up taxis. Consequently, the TALAKO project contributes to the aim of reducing environmental pollution in cities. In the process of searching a fitting project vehicle, the project team looked across national borders and could convince LEVC, a pioneer in electrically powered taxis and known for the London black cabs, to participate in the project with a model specifically build for the taxi business. The vehicle’s battery capacity is sufficient for 130 km travel distance and comes with an additional range extender to reach up to 500 km.

The consortium will set up a prototype system within the first six months in Mühlheim a.d.R. at Taxi Stephany. The company is already operating a LEVC taxi and convinced by the complementary inductive charging method. Subsequently, the pilot system will be set up and commissioned in Cologne allowing up to six taxis to charge their batteries at the same time.

Project-related publications