Electrical taxis at Schipol airport

Over 160 electrical driven taxis started working between Schipol international airport and Amsterdam in mid October.

Two taxi services, BIOS-Groen and BBF SchipolTaxi, with support from the city, now have their own battery charging points at the airport, and are using Tesla Model S60kW cars, with a range of about 390 kms. Tesla is a US company specialising in electrical vehicles.

The city is hoping that this move will encourage conventional taxi services, most of which use diesel, to consider transforming their fleets to electrically-driven vehicles.

The journey from the airport to the city is about 28 kms and 85 per cent of the taxi traffic from the airport – or about 1,600 journeys a day – is into the city.

Schipol is also introducing the use of Chinese-made BDY electrical buses between terminals.

BDY is a China-based company but it is 60 per cent American owned, with one of the largest shareholding belong to one of the world's richest men, Warren Buffet.