He was already leaning towards it, but when Alex Lilley saw gas prices climb to $1.81 a litre earlier this year, the decision to switch his taxi cab to electric was an obvious one to make.
“I said ‘yeah I’m done with (the gas vehicle),’” the Canadian Cab owner/operator recalled.
It is the first all-electric taxi in operation in Guelph. Lilley took it on the road for work officially June 10.
Lilley got the vehicle used in Milton and got the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV retrofitted with all the equipment and decals needed to operate it as a cab.
While high gas prices triggered the decision, it’s something that has been on his mind for a while.
“I’ve been trying to push since 2018, and I finally got my way with my dad, who is my business partner, Lilley said.
At first, his dad Jim was skeptical at the prices for vehicles. But he gave the green light.
Hybrid vehicles have been a part of the fleet for a bit. His uncle Phil has been using hybrids for more than 10 years. But electric? It took until 2024 to get there.
Immediately, the savings on gas stuck out to him.
“I’ve had to pick up some of the old guy’s jaws off the ground because they’re spending $70 a day, where I spend $10 to $12 a day,” he said.
Canadian Cab has 27 vehicles in operation, with each employee owning their own vehicle.
Lilley admits there was some apprehension among his co-workers, who did heckle him with comments like not being able to make it to Toronto.
Now, those same co-workers are curious about how things are going.
“They want to know how I do every week, and they want my numbers and all that sort of stuff,” he said.
“I think it’s starting to change a couple minds because just how cheap it is and everything. I’m sure they’ll wait until a winter goes through to see what the real difference is.”
The vehicle itself is between 450 to 500 kilometres in range on a full charge, but Lilley expects that will drop to around 350 km in the winter.
He charges his vehicle every night, and rarely gets under 50 per cent, usually using between 200 to 250 km a day.
“With cabs, it just makes so much sense,” said John Watson, eMobility Coordinator with Guelph not-for-profit sustainability advocates eMERGE Guelph.
He said one of the big things for him is the brakeware, and something people may not really think about when thinking of going electric.
“Typically, you’d be putting on anywhere up to like a half million kilometres in a career for a car, and a lot of that, you’d be doing multiple brake jobs over and over again (with a gas vehicle),” he said.
The savings go beyond multiple brake jobs and the gas, he said. There is also savings on no muffler or oil changes.
On the long-term scale, the change over plays a part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’re kind of at this interesting stage now, where we’re crossing from early adopters to the early majority,” Watson said.
He said there is a lot of fear of uncertainty – or FUD, as he called it – over electric vehicles for consumers, and urges people to try one out.
“Honestly, it was a very small part of it,” Lilley admitted when thinking of the emissions impacts of his switch.
But his wallet is a lot lighter over the last month, and is optimistic his Canadian Cab co-workers will eventually follow suit and switch to electric as well.
