Cab Companies Hope Hybrids Can Hack It in L.A.

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The typical cab is big and heavy, with Ford? two-ton Crown Victoria a popular model.

Well, the auto revolution appears to be catching on with the taxi industry, a business where even front-wheel-drive cars are suspect.

Hybrids are increasingly popping up in taxi fleets across Los Angeles County ?a push likely to gain momentum as local officials consider requiring more taxi companies to use the vehicles to cut down on air pollution and carbon emissions.

Long Beach has them, so does Burbank, and last month, Los Angeles welcomed its first two hybrid taxis: Toyota Priuses operated by Bell Cab.

?t? the way of the future,?said Michael Calin, general manager of Hawthorne-based Bell. ?eople feel better about using a cab that doesn? pollute as much and we know that eventually the government will mandate that we start using vehicles that use alternative fuel or are hybrids.?p>In greening its taxi cab fleet, Los Angeles is surprisingly behind other major metropolitan areas, such as San Francisco, where 14 percent of taxis are hybrids, and New York, where 15 percent are.

For Los Angeles, a city with a bigger air pollution problem, there are only two hybrids out of 2,303 taxi cabs operating in the city ?less than 1 percent of the fleet. Some other local cities have more.

Last summer, Burbank approved two taxi companies to use hybrids, United Independent Taxi and City Cab; about 20 percent of their 120 cabs is now green.

Further south, Long Beach Yellow Cab rolled out its first hybrid taxis in September and now has 10 in service ?ive Priuses and five Ford Escape SUVs. The company also has five Crown Victorias that have run on compressed natural gas, or CNG, for the last nine years.


Going electric

William Rouse, general manager of the Long Beach cab company, said that operating the hybrids should be easier than the CNG vehicles, given there are relatively few CNG refueling stations. However, he has other concerns.

?he riskiest aspect to this from a business perspective is that many of these technologies and new cars haven? been tested enough yet to see how they fare with the demands of taxi driving,?Rouse said. ?ut we?e cautiously optimistic.?p>One of Rouse? used hybrids has needed a few thousand dollars in repairs less than a year in use. However, the bigger question for many is how long hybrid batteries will last, given that cabs are usually driven many more miles than passenger cars.

So far, the initial reports are good. San Francisco recently retired 15 Ford Escape hybrids after each racked up more than 300,000 miles on the original battery.

However, Rouse said drivers, many of whom finance their own cabs, are skeptical of switching to hybrids because the cost of purchase and maintenance. A used low-mileage hybrid can run about $15,000 to $20,000 compared with a used Crown Victoria at just $6,000 with comparable mileage. Of course, there are gas savings, given that Priuses can get 45 mile per gallon while a Crown Victoria is in the teens.

In any case, cab companies may soon have less of a choice.

Although Los Angeles does not require taxi fleets to include some green vehicles, the city and Santa Monica are expected within the next year to add such a requirement when drafting taxicab concession agreements.

One obstacle in Los Angeles has been that each hybrid purchase must get individual approval from city officials, since the vehicles are smaller than that city? current minimum size for cabs. That provision would have to change.

?ybrid cabs would be an important first step in improving air quality. And looking in the face of global warming, the old ways of doing business are out the window,?said Los Angeles Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, head of the city? transportation committee. ?axis in Los Angeles might be different colors on the outside, but the goal is for them all to be green on the inside.?p>Meanwhile, taxi cab company officials such as Calin of Bell Cab are left to either embrace the trend or shun it until it? forced upon them. With business down 20 percent, he sometimes gets worried about hopping on the hybrid wagon. But he has hoped that people will single out his company because they can request a hybrid for no additional charge.

?ustomers really seem to like them and the drivers, too, who say it? easier to drive for long periods of time,?Calin said. ?opefully it?l give us a competitive advantage in some way.?enews_Column=0

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