By Spooky on August 6th, 2025 Category: Auto
Because car AC units break down too often and repairs are too expensive, Afghan taxi drivers often turn to handmade roof-mounted rudimentary cooling units.
Driving through Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, you’re likely to see taxis with large rectangular boxes mounted on the roof and large tubes extending from them and into the cabin, through a rear window or through a hole cut into the roof. They are handmade cooling devices meant to replace the cars’ built-in air-conditioning systems, which tend to break down when they are most needed and cost a fortune to repair. 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. They’re just not meant for vehicle installation.
“These cars’ AC systems didn’t work, and repairs were too expensive. So I went to a technician, [and] had a custom cooler made,” one taxi driver told AFP.
“This works better than air conditioning,” another driver said. “ACs only cool the front. This cooler spreads air throughout the car.”
With temperatures often exceeding 40 degrees Celsius during the summer months, taxi drivers have to get creative to keep passengers cool and these evaporative air coolers have proven very reliable and cheap to maintain.
