The transportation needs in highly dense urban pockets is leading to high pollution islands in India. To address this issue, the emission legislations are becoming more stringent with an aim to reduce the emissions at national level. App based taxis are becoming lifeline for all major Indian cities. So far, these taxis are predominantly diesel powered compact cars. Thus, vehicle powertrain electrification is a good idea to improve local air quality in such urban pockets. While upgradation of internal combustion engines will add significant costs due to expensive exhaust after-treatment systems, electric motor driven taxis can be the ideal solution for emission reduction, as their operation is completely free of local pollutant emissions. However, the currently available electric vehicles are more expensive than the internal combustion engine powered counterparts.
Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on optimizing battery electric vehicles for taxi segment requirements, and analyzes possible ways to make the technology affordable. The presented work begins with a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threads (SWOT) analysis for vehicle electrification, having clean urban mobility as central objective. Taxi driving data collected from Pune city driving is analyzed statistically to arrive at a real driving pattern for an app-based taxi operation. The driver demanded torque from the real world driving is used for drivetrain sizing. The powertrain losses and other accessory loads from the real driving measurements are included to define the maximum vehicle power requirement. The daily running distance, calculated based on the app-based taxi survey, forms the basis for the determination of the required energy storage system capacity. A cost optimization between 48 V and high voltage (100……400 V) energy storage systems and propulsion components is also included in the study, as are analyses of various battery charging infrastructure possibilities in Indian cities compared to the best practices available globally. There are hosts of subsidies provided by governments across the globe to make electrified powertrains affordable. The possibilities of binning different subsidies are also analyzed based on energy consumption of the proposed vehicle and current energy price levels.
This paper considers tank to wheel efficiency with a focus on affordability of electrified powertrains in the urban taxi segment. The output from this work establishes the requirements for right sizing the electric vehicle components and for the promotional subsidies to strengthen the position of battery electric vehicle in the app-based taxi segment.