Due to the fact that car air conditioning systems break down too often as a result of excessive heat and repairs are too expensive, taxi cab drivers in Afghanistan often turn to handmade roof-mounted rudimentary systems in order to cool the inside of their vehicles.
Driving through Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, you’re likely to see taxi cabs with large rectangular boxes mounted on the roof and large tubes extending from them and into the vehicles, through a rear window or through a hole cut into the roof.
Blue taxi cabs were mostly seen with what they cobbled together and strapped to the roof with exhaust hoses delivering the cool air through the passenger windows of the cabs.
They are handmade cooling devices meant to replace the cars’ built-in air-conditioning systems, which used to always break down when they are most needed and cost a fortune to repair, reports AFP.
According to the report, similar to industrial evaporative air cooling installations, these boxes can lower temperatures by 12 degrees Celsius through water evaporation. They are less noisy than air conditioning systems and consume way less power.
With temperatures often exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in the country during the summer months, taxi cab drivers have to get creative to keep passengers cool and these evaporative air coolers have proven very reliable and cheap for them to maintain.
One of the drivers was seen using sticky tape to attach the cooler’s exhaust vent onto the taxi cab’s window, while his assistant climbed the roof of the cab to fix the body of the unit to it and there is always the need to manually refill water in the unit twice a day in order to ensure continued cooling.
One of the drivers who carried out the idea was quoted as saying: “These cars’ AC systems didn’t work, and repairs were too expensive. So I went to a technician and had a custom cooler made. This works better than air conditioning. The ACs in our cars only cool the front. This handmade cooler spreads air throughout the car.”
In short, taxi cab drivers have cobbled together a creative solution to spare them and their passengers from the sweltering heat.
