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Hybrid Taxis Hit New York City
November 10, 2005



By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Readers will remember our earlier articles, “The Truth About Hybrid Cars: They Don’t Save You Money“ and “Everything You Wanted to Know About Hybrids”. Today New York City announced a mini-”fleet” of hybrid taxis. Currently there are only six, but officials state that the entire fleet of 13,000 cabs may be replaced within the next five years.

Our earlier stories indicated that if you were say, comparing a Honda Civic to a Toyota Prius, choosing the Prius may not make financial sense. In the case of taxicabs, though, it seems like this might make more sense, since the comparisons are very different.

The Ford hybrid sport utility vehicle gets as much as 36 miles per gallon in city driving, double the mileage of the taxi fleet’s current Ford Crown Victoria model. Source: Reuters
We Say: The FWD Ford Escape Hybrid gets 36 MPG City and 31 Highway, while the Ford Crown Victoria gets 17 City and 25 Highway, according to 2006 EPA estimates. Edmunds.com states the base price for the FWD Escape Hybrid is around $27,000, while the base price for the Crown Victoria is about $24,500. That’s a much smaller price gap than in our earlier articles, and since they’re obviously not going to look into gas-powered Civics for cabs, this is a realistic comparison. I think this might actually make sense.

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http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2113

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