Cabbies say Heathrow does not care about air pollution, as they announce sky high taxi electric charging price
Heathrow has to try and get air pollution levels down, as they are already breaching legal limits. With a 3rd runway, they would only get worse. Heathrow has pledged, and tried to persuade the government, that it will do all it can to keep pollution levels down, and there will be (very, very hard to believe …) “no more” vehicles on the roads round Heathrow, associated with the airport, than now. One of the things Heathrow hopes will help is use of more electric vehicles, lowering local pollution. So one might have thought they would be keen to encourage taxis to use electricity as much as possible, to make their air pollution figures look better. Sure enough, there are now many electric charging points. But belatedly Heathrow has now announced that they will charge a very high price (31p per kW) for this charging. This is far higher than plug-in on street Polar for as little as 0.09p per KW, or even dedicated Transport for London taxi chargers at 22p per KW. Taxi drivers are saying they will not pay the 31p, and will instead use the petrol option on their hybrids for the trip back into London. By contrast, Gatwick has 8 charging points in short stay car parks, with free electricity, and free parking for up to 4 hours for this.
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“Heathrow don’t care about lowering emissions” says cabbie as sky high electric charging price announced
The airport have revealed the cost to charge an electric taxis at the feeder park rank will be a whopping 31p per KW.
Currently it is possible to plug-in on street with competitors Polar for as little as 0.09p per KW. Dedicated Transport for London taxi chargers charge 22p per KW respectively.
The price now makes Heathrow more expensive than the notoriously inflated motorway fuelling options.
Cliff Mahoney, a London Taxi driver who has purchased the new LEVC TX electric taxi and works from Heathrow said “Heathrow don’t care about lowering emissions”
He went on to say “Having know the price for months it appears they have left the announcement to within days of the implementation.
“This will make it not cost effective to charge these expensive Zero Emissions capable vehicles at the airport whilst going through the taxi feeder park. The general census of opinion is that drivers will not use the chargers at that price. This means that these iconic vehicles will be leaving the airport on range extender petrol engines rather than clean electric they were designed to use.
“Heathrow say these prices are cost and set by the CAA however Gatwick Airport who seem committed to lowering their emissions offer drivers not only free charging but up to 4 hours free parking.”
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The Heathrow website on electric charging points (nothing made at all clear) is at
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and on electric vehicles, with application forms etc etc
There is no mention anywhere of the cost.
It seems there are some free charging points for electric vehicles in Heathrow short stay car parks, but the parking has to be paid for. No charging points, as far as we can work out, in long stay carparks. https://www.zap-map.com/pts/0j46o5r/
The Gatwick airport website says:
Gatwick is working towards the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% before 2020.
To help towards our goal and to support greener methods of transport, we’ve installed eight charging points for electric vehicles. All of these are located in our short stay car parks where you can re-charge your vehicle free of charge and stay free for up to four hours*.
How to use the charging points
It’s very easy:
- Download the POD Point Open Charge app and register for a free account – it only takes a few seconds.
- Roll up, take your parking ticket and plug in your vehicle at one of our eight charging points. These are located in car park 3 (orange car park), level 1 in the South Terminal and in car park 5, level 3 in the North Terminal.
- Use the Open Charge app to find the correct charging point and confirm your charge within 15 minutes.
- Please go to the customer services office before you exit the car park. Show the Open Charge app and your car park ticket then drive away!
- You can check live availability of our charging points with POD Point, but no pre-booking is necessary.
* Parking is only free for four hours, after that time the rate will be charged at the normal hourly rate.
https://www.gatwickairport.com/parking/other-parking-options/electric-charging-points/
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