AutoblogGreen

Ford made compressed natural gas (CNG) Crown Victorias for 10 years but discontinued them in 2004. These would be cleaner and cheaper to run then hybrids. NY is expanding their network of CNG stations. BAF Technologies currently make CNG retrofits for the CV, Merc, and Town Car.

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IN NZ LPG CONVERSIONS OR xFACTORY WAS A GREAT OPTION, BUT THIS MONTH THE OWNERS OF NZ's LPG NETWORK PUT UP THE PRICE OF LPS GAS BY 20 o/o, and basically killed of the idea of convertions. So much for our GREEN Labour government.LPG is now going to be $1-19 per litre from Feb!!!
Yopu have to be doing big miles to warrant a conversion now @ $5,000.00 (NZ)!!!

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Dear GOD no SUV cabs please!! They have even less legroom than the bloody Crown Vics!!!

The best cabs EVAR are the minivan cabs. Please make a hybrid minivan cab, and then make hybrid minivans for people to buy!!!!! GET WITH IT TOYOTA AND HONDA!!!

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Why not go for yellow london cabs, they have good legroom.

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what do you mean the prius does not have enough luggage room. Thats non sense. the prius has a lot of space as far as I know. Its good enough for a road trip with 4 people. check the link bellow

http://www.edmunds.com/new/2007/toyota/prius/100777218/photos.html#

They might wanna buy a couple of tesla roadster as taxis....hehehe

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Seriously, the London taxi's are some of the nicest I've ever been in. Throw a hybrid or diesel engine in there and paint it yellow. That's all you need.

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Dave Johnston: Google is your friend, it found over 2,000 links for "Prius Taxi". I've listed a few.

http://www.greentaxi.org/testimonials.php
Actual use by taxi drivers in Vancouver BC and San Antonio, Texas.

http://www.hybridexperience.ca/Toyota_Prius.htm
Scroll down the page to the paragraph on high milage hybrid taxis, it has a link to a very interesting video you should watch.

http://sftaxicab.blogspot.com/2007/10/toyota-prius-cabs.html
Yes, they are using Prius taxis in San Francisco and Vancouver. I've been to Wellington NZ, San Francisco and Vancouver B.C., San Francisco hills are steeper, and Vancouver is at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. I can tell you from personal experience, a Prius has no trouble handling the hills of San Francisco.

The NYC taxi commission has been tradition bound. They were still using Checker cabs in the 70's that were copies of a 1950s era Chevy sedan! They have been remarkably restrictive in the models allowed for taxi use, most from US manufacturers. Of course, now they have to change due to high fuel costs.

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As CNW Marketing Research analyst Art Spinella told AN, "If Ford were .....

Hold it right there !

Correct me, if I'm wrong, but isn't CNW marketing the outfit which did the flawed study on the Prius - it having worse life cycle pollution than a Hummer ?
Are people still listening to them ?

And what's the NYC Commission members doing in all this anyway ? They don't drive cab. Surely their task is just to fix fares and specify the paint job the vehicles have got to have.

"The only way (an arm of) the gov't should get involved is to stop monopolies from forming to allow free market competition to choose the best technologies."

Spinella should be telling the NYC Commission to butt out and let the cabbies choose their own wheels. And another thing. While I'm here. Isn't it rather insulting to all those 200,000+ Prius drivers out there to suggest their vehicle couldn't do the job of a Hackney carriage ? Pah-leeze. When people everywhere have probably used a Prius at one time or other to ferry most of the items from their previous apartments, but shucks, we just found someone here who thinks that this same vehicle couldn't handle a city slicker with a brief case ?

.....the taxi officials are looking at the Ford Escape hybrids (which we've heard plenty about) and the Toyota Prius, which would only work if it were made larger and could hold more luggage, Spinella said. So in his world we have to have behemoths patrolling the streets because some demented shopaholic can't tell the dispatcher "Send me a big cab, I've been busy !!"

I think the Commission should do something about this situation. I'm talking about the Monopolies Commission of course. And while I am at it I'll be sure to ask the people over there, another question that's been burning me for some time. "So if this is The Monopoly Commission how come there's still only the ONE ??"
T2

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There is something seriously wrong with the date and time stamping system on Autoblog Green. I posted a reply (now #7) to Dave Johnson's post (now #9). The posting date on Mr. Johnsons post has been pushed ahead at least 8 days!

It may have something to do with Mr. Johnson being in a different time zone, across the international date line.

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I totally endorse bill Odonnells comments as a retired taxi driver in Wellington New Zealand.The LPG industry over here has just gone back on all its assurances given to the Taxis industry that LPG would remain half the the price of petrol.Wellington is one of the hilliest suburbs in the western world and we have the greens over here praising a prius without any one having done any real independent tests. Tests carried out by a major wellington taxis company revealed the prius hybrid technoly was a dismissal failure when co mpared to a 4.1 litre ford falcon on LPG at the prices at last november which was the same price to run and with the same emissions, and you are not comparing apples with apples here on comparitive cc ratings and passenger comfort. In Wellington a professional taxi service operating in a deregulated industry has to operate 24 hrs a day 6 days a week transporting 4 passengers with their luggage to the centre of town or the suburbs 80 % of which are very hilly. In this situation the prius technoly is not up to scratch at the moment and is most times operating on petrol. The best bet at the moment on emmissions and cost with the high prices for LPG app0ears to be modern diesel vehicles such as the Chysler or hyuandi sonata, however I would like to be proved wrong. IF ANYBODY IN THE US OR THE WESTERN WORLD IS AWARE OF ANY TAXI COMPANY THAT HAS SUCCESSFULLY OPERATED HYBRID VEHICLES IN A HILLY CITY ECONOMICALLY AND WITH LOW EMISSIONS 24 HRS A DAY 6 DAYS A WEEK I WOULD LOVE TO HERE MORE INFORMATION. DAVE JOHNSTON, WELLINGTON NEW ZEALAND

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