New York Taxis Will Go Hybrid

Jason Siegel writes "The New York Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) has approved the Clean Air Taxicabs Pilot Program Act, paving way for a hybrid car to be approved for NY taxi service by this fall. Soon, a large portion of New York's yellow cars will also be "green." According to the Coalition Advocating for Smart Transportation (CAST) poll, seven out of ten of the state's citizens support a switch to hybrids." New York might also reduce car pollution by loosening the rules for running a taxi, in order to reduce the need for private cars.

Part of the fun of riding in taxis

[HungWeiLo]

Part of the fun of riding in taxis is being able to ride in a Police Interceptor. Nothing like going 0-60 in 5s while slipping into some godawful tight opening on the left lane on Fifth Avenue.

But this should be good. Hybrid vehicles really shine in urban congested traffic anyways (lots of stops and crawls)

Vancouver as well, I think

[shut_up_man]

I've seen quite a few shiny new Prius [toyota.com] taxis here in Vancouver with Yellow Cabs. I had a quick chat to one of the drivers and he said he didn't really care about the environment, it's that hybrids cost less to run when petrol gets expensive.

week-old news.. americans like their space

[Animaether]

Read about it over a week back at CNN; http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/07/01/green.t axis.ap/index.html [cnn.com]

I found this to be particularly amusing :

The problem, explained commission chairman Matthew W. Daus, is that people like their cabs big, and hybrids do not have the legroom and large trunks of the fleet's current workhorse, an extra-long version of the Ford Crown Victoria.

running a cab is expensive!

[VoidEngineer]

For those of you who don't live in New York City, you may be interested to know that it can cost upwards of $750,000 to obtain a licence/emblem to operate a yellow-cab. The licenses are actually physical emblems which are welded to the hood of the cab, and if you don't have one of those emblems, you can't paint your cab yellow without it getting impounded. As I understand it, the emblems are minted in a manner similar to how a coin or a police badge is minted.

Anyhow, the city has put a cap on the number of cabs which can operate in Manhattan (something like 200,000 cabs, I think), in part just by not minting and selling any new emblems. The law of supply-and-demand has, naturally, driven the cost of licenses up. Interestingly, a cab emblem is considered a piece of real-estate, as I understand, and can be placed in a will. Furthermore, they're considered suitable collateral for taking out a mortgage or loan similar to a home-equity loan. As I understand it, a motivated cabbie can earn a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. And, as you would expect in such a situation, there have formed many cab-companies which try to gobble up all the emblems that they can and hire imigrant drivers who earn a fraction of the profit they make, the rest going to the owners of the cab companies.

Naturally, there are other limosine and cab services which operate in the city. But they don't get to paint their cars yellow.

Anyhow, the moral of the story is that this is a huge decision, involving what I suspect is a billion dollar industry. I don't know exactly how big the new york yellow-cab industry is, but it's real big. And there's lots of money involved in this decision.

Re:A step in the right direction

[lordkuri]

hybrids power down when stuck in traffic, which is why city MPG are often higher than highway, unlike every other car

in-town driving is also a lot of stop-and-go, and regenerative braking [wikipedia.org] helps out a lot in those situations as well.

Re:Vancouver as well, I think

[pHatidic]

Our family owns a first generation Prius, and a couple weeks ago we ordered a second generation one to replace it (better crash test rating). It costs me less than 20 bucks to fill up the tank, whereas a comparable volvo would cost 45 bucks. When our battery eventually died after three years, Toyota replaced it for free under their good will program. When you combine the 50% gas savings with the tax rebate you get for buying it, this thing has saved us several thousand dollars.

As Far As I'm Concerned...

[LEX LETHAL]

There should be national support and a firm deadline for the conversion of all public service vehicles to hybrid technology. Something along the lines of "all hybrid by 2008" .

With respect to hybrid, there should be no reason why fleet vehicles that are either fully owned or subsidized by local governments are not already on a program with an equally agressive posture. Most of us in the USA already see some kind of eBus or hybrid vehicle presence in daily use for public rapid transport. They are still so novel that I take the time to notice and admire that this is one more step in the right direction. I'm not referring to the overhead "bumper car" style electric busses or trolleys, but the true free-drive busses used for inner city and rural public transport. What I'm proposing is the conversion of the entire fleet in every American city, and a deadline to back it up.

I know the article is about taxicabs, but if owner-operators can make the leap in New York, why can't it work also on the national level as a mandate for the conversion of all public service vehicles? The sheer number of vehicles sold should be incentive enough for all auto manufacturers that have (or will have) a hybrid vehicle in their lineup to become involved in garnering support from appointed public officials and their constituents.

How can a complete conversion of fleet vehicles, especially public service inner city or rural transportation, not make sense everywhere? People will still have their SUVs and QuadCabs as a means to get around for personal transport, and rightly so. However, when you choose to ride public transport - school busses included - you would do so on a vehicle that was part of a comprehensive national fuel conservation and toxic emissions reduction agenda.

Re:running a cab is expensive!

[Comatose51]

Wow, that actually explains a lot. When I'm in NYC, I take a "limo" service. These are actual Lincolns operated by Chinese companies. I have a business card with numbers on it. I call service and get picked up in a Lincoln and driven very quickly to where I want to go. Surprisingly, the cost of all this is a fraction of the cost of hailing a cab. The only downside is that you have to call in advance to be picked up and you have to speak Chinese. Otherwise, it's much better than taxis. I always wondered how it was possible for them to be that cheap while operating Lincolns. Your post explains a lot of it. These limo services apparently spread by word of mouth.

The Ideal Hybrid Car - Bio-Diesel

[kallistiblue]

I've thought about this and I think that the idea hybrid car would have the following features.

-Reasonable price
-diesel powered

Why?
Well diesel engines only require slight modification to run biodiesel. Biodiesel is a net zero gain carbon fuel.

By this I mean that it's produced from organic crops so the carbon released is mearly absorbed by the next generation of fuel still in the fields.

The USA currently pays farmers $30 billion dollars to not grow crops. Why not pay them to grow Rape Seed and Soy so that the country can create an abundance of Bio-Diesel fuel.

The side advantage is that once the USA became less dependant on the oil of the middle east we would not have to be involved in middle east politics. Without our oil money the middle east would lose it's entire power base.

If we were really smart we would create a Hybrid car that used a sterling engine which is about 2x as effecient as internal combustion engines at extracting fuel power.
Sterling engines are what power nuclear subs. They only problem with Sterling Engines are that they tag 5 min or so to heat up and get miximum efficiency. With a hybrid car this is a moot problem because you can operate on battery power for the first 5 minutes.

Read more about this here:
http://www.hybrid-car-reviews.com/ [hybrid-car-reviews.com]

Re:MixedPower.com Has a Lot More Hybrid Car Info

[YrWrstNtmr]

70 miles a day, every day, for 7 years is ~180,000 miles. How many 'real world' cars have YOU had go to that mileage? I haven't had any. My high point was 160k with a 1990 Chevy minivan, although my current Ford truck is well on its way at 125k.
And 70 miles a day, every day, is a LOT for most people. Yes, I know SoCal people do a lot of miles commuting daily. But most people don't. My current commute is 8 miles each way. 70 miles per week more like it. And when it's not 98 degrees, or snowing, I usually ride my bike. Unlimited mpg...:)

I'm not saying saving gas and emissions is a bad thing, or something not to be sought. Far from it. But if we're going to do these calsulations, we have to actually look at the numbers that pop out. All of them.