After LEZ also mandatory electrification of cab fleet on hold in Brussels?

The business newspaper L’Echo writes that there is a good chance that the measure requiring all new cabs in Brussels to be emission-free by January 1st, 2025, will be postponed for a year.

The main reason would be that there are not enough charging stations in the Brussels Region, while the high price of new electric or hydrogen-powered cars would also be a stumbling block.

According to the newspaper, the issue of the postponement is already on the table of the resigned Brussels government, and the National Grouping of Taxi Companies has also contacted the negotiators of the future government. After the two-year postponement of the LEZ extension, it would be the second postponement that would not precisely improve air quality in the Brussels Region.

240 zero-emission taxis in Brussels

There are about 240 zero-emission vehicles in the Brussels region out of a fleet of 3,250 active cabs in the capital. In 2022, the Brussels government launched the measure requiring all new cabs in Brussels to be emission-free from January 1st, 2025.

The measure was already a thorn in the side of the Federation of Belgian Taxis (Febet), among others. It also led to a protest by cab drivers at the time, denouncing, among other things, the lack of consultation.

The same arguments that surfaced then are now being cited again as reasons why there should be a delay: insufficient fast charging stations and the high cost of EVs or hydrogen-powered cars.

At the end of September, during the vote to postpone the LEZ in the environmental committee of the Brussels Parliament, even an amendment was introduced to add postponement of the electrification requirement for cabs, but it did not gain a majority. Nevertheless, according to L’Echo, outgoing Minister-President Rudi Vervoort (PS) has now put the proposal back on the table of the Brussels government.

Omission in study

At the time, the Brussels government had already clarified that the obligation could only be honored if Brussels had sufficient charging stations by 2025. A task force would also submit a report on this to the government. According to the same task force, the Brussels Region will have 22,000 charging stations by 2035.

However, the cab companies point to an omission in one of the studies conducted by VUB, which assumes that 95% of cab charging is done at home while many cabs drive at night. Moreover, many cab drivers live in apartments without chargers, which would automatically increase the burden on public charging stations.