Escape most popular hybrid cab in NYC

3087 Views 8 Replies 6 Participants Last post by MadMax, May 12, 2008

HybridArchitect

Discussion Starter · May 4, 2008

Here in Vancouver, the Toyota Prius is the most popular cab by a long shot (I have yet to see an Escape Hybrid set-up as a taxi), but in New York City Ford's Escape Hybrid is #1 (accounting for 83% of the hybrid cabs on the street).

From Autoblog Green:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/0...the-most-popul/
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NYC hybrid taxis double in a year. Guess which is the most popular?

Since it was decided that the entire fleet of taxis in New York City should become hybrids by 2012 less than a year ago, the number of hybrid hacks has doubled. If the city can achieve that same 200 percent increase every year it will achieve the goal. Out of 13,150 taxi medallions 1020 (just under 8 percent) of them are hybrids today, according to this article at YellowCabNYC. Way to go, New York!

We know you were wondering which hybrid leads the pack so we have the skinny on that too. Drum roll please. The number one vehicle choice of taxi buyers in the Big Apple was the Ford Escape hybrid (pictured above) a with whopping 845 units out there pounding the pavement. Yeah, we are pretty sure Ford is happy about that too. To see how the rest of the field breaks down, hit the jump.

Breakdown of hybrids in the NYC taxi fleet is as follows.
845 -- Ford Escape :yahoo:
92 -- Toyota Highlander
31 -- Toyota Camry
23 -- Nissan Altima
18 -- Toyota Prius
6 -- Mercury Mariner
3 -- Lexus RX 400h
1 -- Honda Civic

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Surfscape

· #2 · May 4, 2008

When the average person drives a Hybrid the benefit is small but in a fleet of cabs the savings and environmental impact benefit is obvious. This whole green thing is long over due.

Whether you agree in global warming or not the seperation from the oil addiction or at least reducing it's use has got to happen, Only OPEC hopes we stay status quo.

Thanks for the article HA!!! :yahoo:

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jonas1022

· #3 · May 5, 2008

That's allot of batteries in one spot...

That's dangerous...like gasoline isn't. Might make it worth their while to have a city battery recycling program for things like that. I wonder, are the batteries in these hybrids recycleable/rebuildable? I mean, since it's to save the enviorment...

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HybridArchitect

Discussion Starter · #4 · May 5, 2008

jonas1022 said:
That's allot of batteries in one spot...

That's dangerous...like gasoline isn't. Might make it worth their while to have a city battery recycling program for things like that. I wonder, are the batteries in these hybrids recycleable/rebuildable? I mean, since it's to save the enviorment...

Ford, Toyota (and I believe Honda & Nissan) all have recycling programmes in place for the NiMH battery packs in their hybrid vehicles (I imagine GM and others will follow suit as their hybrid models build in numbers).

I believe there is even a "rebate" of a couple hundred dollars that will be paid to vehicle owners when (if) they return battery packs for replacement… as of this date, there have been very few batteries replaced despite over 1-million hybrids sold and all the auto manufacturers state that the NiMH batteries should last "the lifetime of the vehicle."