Sustainable Mobility: Walking The Talk - Andrew Bezzina

Sustainable mobility: walking the talk

eCabs is the mobility leader in Malta. it evolved from a transport service provider into a mobility technology player. Today it employs a tech team of over 50 technologists hailing from 10 nationalities operating across five countries. its next big step is taking its technology into foreign territories in 2022 to compete with the global giants. “While we plan to embark on this exciting journey, we are not losing sight of the local challenges and our own responsibilities. We made a conscious decision to position sustainability at the core of our agenda and we are determined to persuade local stakeholders to start walking the talk” says dr andrew bezzina, Co-founder of eCabs and the director responsible for Malta operations.

possibly one of this year’s boldest moves in sustainability locally was your commitment to a fully electric and hybrid fleet operating on your platform. What spurred this? Commercially-speaking, 2020 was a terrible year in which business activity in Malta halted to a grind. However, in terms of quality of life, it was literally a breath of fresh air with less traffic, less congestion and cleaner air. In many ways that situation contributed to the resetting of our thinking around the boardroom table and saw us reprioritise, amongst many things, an already important priority for a long term sustainable and cleaner platform which is at the core of our ESG agenda. Having a local operation that runs entirely on EVs and hybrids by 2025 is no mean feat, it presents many challenges and relies on multiple stakeholder responsibilities. However, we are set on our course and determined to achieve our goal.

how do you plan to achieve this and what results have you seen so far? At the core of whatever we do is data and evidence. Every decision we take is informed by analysis and the collation of knowledge from multiple data points we tap into across our operation. In this context, earlier this year, we launched a pilot project through which we invested in a multi-branded fleet of fully electric vehicles to test and determine the operational and commericial suitability and viability of EV’s in a 24/7 operational context, on our challenging road network. In eight months, we test covered 120,000kms, consuming 14,400KwH of electricity, translating to 0.12KwH per kilometre travelled. We saved 6.1 tonnes in CO2 emission versus an ICE and benefited from economic savings of circa 65% of the fuelcosts. Those CO2 savings would go up to over 600 tonnes p.a with a fully electric eCabs fleet and more than triple that, had we to include all partner driver vehicles. Cost savings have also been positive with 60% less in maintenance and servicing expense. In order to accelerate take-up we also launched a financial incentive for all our partner drivers which

sees them being charged a reduced commission rate for all ECO rides, hence making a direct financial contribution towards the attainment of these goals. In doing this, we are adding more incentives to existing government grants for our partner drivers to invest in cleaner vehicles. To date, out of over 1,000 partners driving on the eCabs platform, 150 already drive an electric or hybrid. In essence our plan is to gradually decommission ICE vehicles and replace them with EV’s whilst we incentivise our partner drivers to do the same with their vehicles. Our goal is to complete the full transition by 2025.

“To date, out of over 1,000 partners driving on the eCabs platform, 150 already drive an electric or hybrid”