22 May 2007Stacie Servetah and Adam Cataldo
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered all city taxis to operate on hybrid engines by 2012 as part of his drive to reduce air pollution.
The city's conventionally powered cabs currently get about 14 miles (22.5 kilometers) a gallon of gasoline, Bloomberg said at a news conference today in front of City Hall. After the transition, city taxis will meet a 30 miles-a-gallon standard, he said.
``It will be the largest, cleanest fleet of taxis anywhere on the planet,'' Bloomberg said.
There are 375 hybrid vehicles among the 13,000 taxis now in the city. Bloomberg's plan is for all taxis to be hybrids by the end of October 2012.
The transition to hybrid cabs will happen in stages over five years as older cabs are retired, Bloomberg said. From now on, taxi owners will have to buy hybrid vehicles, which cost less to operate and emit less exhaust, the mayor said.
``Because taxis are so heavily used, the new standards will have the equivalent effect of removing 32,000 individually owned gas powered vehicle from our streets,'' he said.
Bloomberg said the city is also switching vehicles such as garbage trucks and buses over to those running on hybrid engines as they become available.
The city so far has approved nine gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles for use as taxis, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission Web site.
Approved Models
They include Toyota Motor Corp.'s 2006 models of the Toyota Sienna CE, Prius and Highlander, the 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid and the 2006 Lexus RX400H. Also approved are hybrid versions of Honda Motor Co.'s 2006 Honda Accord and Civic, Ford Motor Co.'s 2006 Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner and General Motors Corp.'s 2007 Saturn VUE Green Line.
By October 2008, there will be 1,000 hybrid taxis, a press release from the mayor's office said. The gasoline-electric cabs will then increase at a rate of 3,000 a year until the city's taxis are all-hybrid by October 2012, according to the timetable.
The new rules will cut the carbon emissions of taxis and for-hire vehicles by half in 10 years, by more than 215,000 tons, and reduce the fuel costs of individual taxi operators an average of $10,000 a year, the release said.
To help the city meet its goal, Yahoo! Inc. said it will donate 10 hybrid Ford Escapes to a city fleet operator, Team Systems. The Escapes, which are expected to go into service in the next few weeks, get 36 miles a gallon on city streets, and they will replace Crown Victorias, which get 14 miles a gallon, the press release said.
Lowering Cost
Brett Smith, a senior auto industry analyst with the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit group, said the city's plan provides an opportunity for automakers to grow their hybrid business.
``You might think 13,000 vehicles is a large number, but in automotive production terms it is not a large number at all,'' Smith said.
Automakers need to sell more hybrid vehicles to bring down the overall cost of production, Smith said.
``It's understood you can't build something in low volume,'' Smith said. ``But if they can get a built-in market, they can start to build these things and develop other markets as they go forward.''
Evgeny Freidman, whose companies operate 800 licensed cabs, said at the news conference that he is replacing his fleet of Crown Victorias with Ford Escape hybrids, which cost about $3,000 more than a conventional Escape.
Freidman said he comes out ahead because the hybrid taxis, with their lower fuel costs, are more popular with drivers, who pay $10 more a shift on some days to use them.
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
To contact the reporters on this story: Stacie Servetah in Trenton, New Jersey, at [email protected] ; Adam L. Cataldo in New York at at [email protected] .
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ak8sz_C1lGiY&refer=us#
