Charge while you wait: it’s a simple enough concept that is ideally suited to the drivers of electric taxis, but until now has been impractical due to cable charging being incompatible with moving taxi ranks. That is all about to change thanks to the joint project “Taxi Charging Concept for Public Areas” (TALAKO) which is funded by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy with EUR 2 million.

An inductively-charged e-taxi has been running on the streets of Mülheim for the past 18 months, thanks to the project consortium which includes the Chair of International Automotive Management at the University of Duisburg (UDE), the taxi maker LEVC GmbH, INTIS GmbH, TaxiRuf, the University of Wuppertal and the City of Cologne.

Essentially, an induction strip is embedded into the road under the rank and a receiver is integrated into the underside of the vehicle. When the two are coupled, the charge begins to flow. The average charging power for one shift is 20 kilowatts - the same as for a charging cable (which can still be used at the same time).

Researchers worked out that the average waiting time in between passengers is 45 minutes – enough to accumulate power to run 150 kilometres, although the range is dependent upon the number of people and how the car is used. If the journey is longer, a range extender can be activated which provides extra power up to 500 kilometres via a fuel-powered generator.

The City of Cologne is so far convinced and has sponsored another four vehicles (each costing EUR 70,000) to the tune of EUR 12,000 each. The local electricity supplier RheinEnergie AG is providing the power free of charge for the next phase. "If five percent of the approximately 1,200 taxis in Cologne are electrified, up to 50,000 tonnes of CO2 can be saved annually," explains Daniel Jaspers from the TALAKO research team in a press release.