It’s taken a while for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to realize that hybrid taxis are a no-brainer. Yesterday, he announced a plan that would require all of the Big Apple’s taxi cabs to be gas-electric hybrids by 2012.
via Reuters
May 23, 2007
On its route from niche to mainstream acceptance, hybrids shed their elite image. Now, hybrid limo services bring a little bit of luxury back into the equation—along with eco-consciousness and common sense.
A US Federal judge barred New York City last week from implementing a regulation that all new taxicabs achieve at least 25 miles per gallon, which was to have taken effect November 1. Judge Paul A. Crotty said the city’s mandate was pre-empted by federal laws. Automakers frequently cite their fear of a “patchwork of legislation,” calling it a “nightmare” to build cars to different standards for different states. But in fact, they have done exactly that for 30 years.
San Francisco taxi drivers are providing solid information about the outer reaches of hybrid battery life. At a recent Ford Motor Company event, Paul Gillespie, San Francisco Taxicab Commission president, said some of his city’s Ford Escape hybrid taxis had passed 300,000 miles of use with no problems.
If you've watched any cable news or read the editorial pages of a major newspaper in the past few months, you're likely to have come across advertisements energy baron T. Boone Pickens' plan to decrease America's dependency on foreign oil. One element of the plan is the promotion of a long existent but relatively unused automotive technology: engines powered by compressed natural gas.
A new report says that New York City hybrid taxis are “unfit and unsafe” for their duties, endangering 240 million passengers and tens of thousands of drivers. And the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, a taxi-fleet trade association that commissioned the 43-page report, has sued the city over the issue. The first deputy taxi commissioner Andrew Salkin fought back at a City Council hearing held yesterday. He said, “Taxicabs with improved gas mileage are fully performing, saving drivers money and doing so safely.”
LimeLite CoachWorks of Santa Clara, Calif., recently added more than 13 feet to a Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid, making it the world's first hybrid SUV stretch limo. It would also be the world's biggest hybrid, if it weren't for hybrid gas-electric buses and locomotives.
A few years ago, it was nearly impossible to rent a hybrid car. Now, the ability to rent a gas-electric vehicle is only limited by your willingness to plan ahead. All the major rental companies have added thousands of hybrids to their fleets in recent years, and they would like to add more to meet growing demand. Unfortunately, they are fighting for the same limited hybrid inventory that has put retail consumers on long waiting lists.
As GM learned with the EV1, nothing about electric cars is quite as simple as it may seem at first glance. As the lessons of the EV1 are still being passionately debated, a new wave of electric trucks are teaching their manufacturers some lessons as well.
In a personality shift that would make Madonna jealous, the hybrid gas-electric vehicle is being transformed from ecoweenie-mobile to lean green crime-fighting machine. Law enforcement departments across the country are considering the use of hybrid vehicles as police cruisers.
