Arabia Taxi ushering a greener UAE with Toyota Prius

Abu Dhabi: Hybrid electric vehicles, especially the Toyota Prius first found use in the US as taxis in 2000. Since then many cities including London, Tokyo, Sydney and Sao Paulo have joined this movement to promote a more environmentally friendly way of travel. The United Arab Emirates became the newest member of this club, earlier this February.

UAE has shown an inclination towards becoming friendlier towards the environment through many of its environmental targets included in the UAE Vision 2021 statement, especially those targeted towards sustainable motoring. Showing their support for this initiative, Arabia Taxi, one of the UAE’s largest taxi operators has decided to include hybrid electric vehicles into their fleet in the form of Toyota Priuses. The first fleet of 50 Priuses was handed over by Al-Futtaim Toyota on 7th February 2018 at Ajman. This momentous occasion was attended by H.E Eng. Omar Ahmed Bin Omair, General Director of Ajman Public Transport Corporation, Saud Abbasi, Managing Director of Al-Futtaim Toyota and PSM Habibullah Khan, Chairman and Managing Director of Arabia Holdings, the parent company of Arabia Taxi among others.

Hybrid electric vehicles have emerged as a viable alternative for conventional gasoline-powered taxis in today's congested city traffic for several reasons. Other than delivering a greater fuel efficiency in cities than gasoline-powered cars, their emissions are also cleaner. They also perform better in stop-start traffic as their electric drives are better suited to the idling and slow speed which is unavoidable in city traffic.  A common concern that is raised about such vehicles is that they have a shorter life on the road because of their battery packs. However, there are many examples of Priuses exceeding the lifetimes of their battery packs, making them comparable to conventional cars.

Toyota has been the obvious choice for many taxi operators trying to turn over a greener leaf. According to Saud Abbasi, this trust is validated by the fact that these vehicles save over 7.65 tons of CO2 during their operation lifetime of 850000 km. With this handover, Arabia Taxi has become the first taxi operator in UAE to include hybrid electric vehicles into their ranks. Hopefully, their example will be followed by many other taxi companies in the future, helping UAE become a greener place.