Lately I’ve been really irritated that taxis aren’t all hybrid or biodiesel. In our age of high prices at the pump and increased environmental awareness that seems like an easy first step to cutting down on pollution and emissions. A lot of mass transit (trains, buses) are already electric or hybrid, so the next group of gas guzzlers is taxis. I know that it places an economic burden on taxis to change, and I’m not saying make them buy or convert cars right now, but it would be a good idea to require it by a certain deadline, or offer incentives to convert. Doesn’t that seem obvious?
At least New York City is getting on the ball – New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered that all city taxi cabs must be hybrid by 2012. Gavin Newsom I am looking in your direction…. San Francisco can go hybrid any day now as far as I am concerned (props to Green Cabs already operating in San Francisco).
In a similar vein, I am also irritated about the lack of green car rentals. I’m heading to Cape Cod next month and I need to rent a car in Boston, but try as I might to find a hybrid rental, none are to be had. Super lame. I was even willing to pay more for it. It just seems like (to me anyway) making big car fleet owners switch their cars, even slowly, would be top of the list of ways to cut down on pollution from driving. I don’t run a rental car company, but if you’re in the business of renting cars for a spell and then selling them off (as most major car rental companies do) you’d want some with really high resale value, and the Prius and other hybrids have amazing resale value (at least in the Bay Area anyway). So it just makes economic sense to have hybrids in your fleet. I don’t think it is going to hurt their gas fees either, hybrids still generally require some gas, so you still need to fill up before returning it.
Am I crazy to think these things? Why can’t people (besides the mayor of NYC) just do what’s obviously right?
June 14, 2007 at 9:58 AM
Kelly, you’ll be very pleased to see Hertz & Avis are adding hybrid cars to their fleets this month!
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-06-14-hertz-hybrids_N.htm
March 22, 2008 at 7:36 PM
Personally I believe the problem are the car manufacturers rather than the people (taxi companies) that use them. You can’t blame someone for trying to keep their running costs low. Hybrid cars are an unnecessary expense when in reality they are just as bad for the environment as the status quo. Want to save the World? Get a bicycle.
March 27, 2008 at 1:41 AM
Kelly, as far as I know Nationalcars has an all-green fleet. Currently their website seems to be down, though. But you might be lucky later, just so you don’t need to cycle from Boston to Cape Cod any more:)
Susanna
April 6, 2008 at 8:30 AM
I would imagine that the initial cost is the problem for cab companies to pay for hybrids. Of course, the taxi drivers (the contractors) pay for their own gas out of pocket, so there are no immediate incentives for the owners of the hybrid fleet. Also, the initial incentive is the problem, right? The companies get cars from second-hand resources, such as used rental cars and police cars. You can imagine how cheap they get those cars for, while hybrids must run $20~30 easily.
Lastly, it’s not like hybrid cars will be stopped by more customers. (Think cab lines.)
The good news is that there are some things I noticed where Boston is trying to encourage. I read in the Globe that 1) the city is giving out $1000 for each hybrid taxi purchased, 2) hybrid taxis can skip the line at Logan Airport (which is a huge deal at certain times of the day/week)