You're reading: Electric taxis to offer cheap rides in Lviv

Shooter.ua, a tech startup inspired by environmental protections, is promoting electric cars in Ukraine and has already started a taxi service in Lviv with four Renault Fluence, $27,000 vehicles with electric engines.

Also, special chargers for the cars will be built in the western Ukrainian city of more than 700,000 people, The goal is to show the advantages of this type of transport.

It is better to pay for electric power than for imported oil, believes Kostyantyn Yevtushenko, the project’s initiator. He owns a Tesla electric car.

In 2014, Shooter.ua already gave a Lviv tax service a Nissan Leaf, an electric car, at no charge.

Besides its “green” effect, electric cars are cheap in usage. A 10-kilometer ride in an electric car would cost one hryvnia, according to Yevtushenko, while the gas ride would cost 18 hryvnias.

People in Lviv are very surprised with the lower tariffs for electric taxis, says Yevtushenko. “Many took driver’s phone number to reserve a ride specifically in the electric car.”  

While Yevtushenko is sure that positive effect of electric cars is obvious, they are quite pricey in Ukraine.

Prices for Renault electric cars in Ukraine range from $17,000 to $100,000. The Tesla electric car goes for over $70,000 in the U.S., but is not officially distributed in Ukraine yet.

“After paying the value added tax, import and excise duties, the car’s price gets higher by 40 percent,” Yevtushenko explains.

If taxes would be minimized, this will definitely increase demand for them, he adds. Shooter.ua team has outlined key changes to the tax Ccde, which they plan to lobby in parliament through the Reanimation Reform Package, a political group made up of post-EuroMaidan Revolution reformers.

However, setting up the necessary infrastructure for the electric cars is also important.

OKKO, a chain of gas stations, already installed 34 chargers at their outlets around the country, two of them are in Kyiv. However, this is still not enough to have a wide circulation of electric engine vehicles.

Yevtushenko says that while there are not many chargers on the streets, it is possible to charge a car from a regular 220 volt wall socket which would take about two hours and will be enough for a 400-kilometer-ride.

It is also possible to buy an electric charger pillar for around $1,130 and install it, making it accessible for the public use. “While waiting for their car to charge, people will have to spend this time somewhere. So they will obviously buy something in your store or restaurant,” an activist continues.

Dima Borisov, a restaurateur in Kyiv, has already done this. In 2014, he installed a charger at his restaurant Crab’s Burger in Vozdvyzhenka neighborhood.

Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures CapitalCiklumFISON and SoftServe.