S.F.'s fleet of 15 new hybrid taxis puts cabbies on course to save gas
- Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/23/BAGFVBFL2M1.DTL&type=printable
For years, Alan Gochberg has climbed into his taxicab and, while driving fares all over San Francisco, watched the gas needle on the big Ford Crown Victoria sink rapidly into the Sunset (or the Richmond, for that matter). Well, no more.
Tuesday morning, the 55-year-old Gochberg, a veteran of 20 years behind the wheel of a cab, was on hand at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza as Mayor Gavin Newsom and a handful of taxi commissioners and auto industry representatives unveiled the newest thing in U.S. cabs: 15 Ford Escape SUVs with gasoline-sipping hybrid power trains.
One of those 15 cabs sitting on the plaza is leased by Gochberg. Beaming like a new parent, he explained that the daily fuel bill for his 5 a.m.-to-3 p. m. shift had dropped from nearly $25 to about $9, a cut of almost two-thirds.
They're boxy little things, these Escapes -- they look somewhat like a truncated Ford Explorer or a slightly larger Toyota RAV. They sit higher than a normal car, but Gochberg says the heavy batteries for the electric part of the hybrid are lodged under the SUV's rear cargo hold and help lower the vehicle's center of gravity.
With the introduction of the 15 Escapes -- 10 belong to the Yellow Cab Cooperative, the other five to Luxor Cab Co. -- San Francisco, which has 1, 381 taxis, became the first city in the United States to create a fleet of hybrid SUV cabs.
"It's a good idea," said Harold Morgan, director of education for the Taxi, Limousine and Paratransit Association, a nonprofit trade organization in Kensington, Md. He said he knew of no other city taxi fleet using hybrid SUVs.
In New York, which has 12,780 taxis, Allan Fromberg, a spokesman for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, said, "We are very much looking into the possibility" of adding Escapes to the fleet.
At the San Francisco press event, Newsom looked around at the big crowd of reporters, taxi officials, car people and the odd hanger-on or two and said, a bit amazed, "I've done about 10 taxicab things, and no one's been this interested in cabs."
The interest comes about this way: A Ford Crown Victoria sedan, the car of choice for most police and taxi fleets, has a perpetually thirsty 4.6-liter V-8 engine that, in Gochberg's experience around town, delivers about 12 to 14 miles per gallon, despite its government fuel economy rating of 18 to 25 mpg.
Gochberg's Escape, using a 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine mated to an electric motor, has given him between 30 and 33 miles per gallon in the three weeks he's been driving the two-wheel-drive vehicle. U.S. government ratings say the Escape gets between 31 and 36 miles per gallon.
Each Escape costs about "$27,000 and change," according to Yellow Cab general manager Hal Mellegard. Each cab, however, will be eligible for a $2, 000 clean air incentive award as part of a "vehicle incentive program" administered by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and funded by a $4 surcharge levied on all vehicles annually registered in the nine-county Bay Area.
E-mail Michael Taylor at mtaylor@sfchronicle.com.
(They sure could use these in Chicago!!! Dan)
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