Anyone Seen a Prius v Taxicab yet?

The San Diego Port District just put 30 of them in taxi service. Here is an article with a (fairly poor) picture.
Green taxis lift off at San Diego airport | SignOnSanDiego.com

 

There's plenty of Gen III cabs here in NYC, so I expect to start seeing the Prius v as well anytime now. Per Tideland's comment, the extra cargo space for airport runs should be the major selling point.

 

Hmmm interesting article but despite all the positives for having a hybrid taxi (esp the v or + in Europe) the following few sentences stood out;

“It’s the first time we’ve bought a new car” in 29 years of business, he said.
The transition to low-emission cabs at the airport is being spurred by federal rebates, state tax incentives and reduced taxi-permit fees.
A federal rebate of up to $7,500 has been applied to down payments on vehicles that list for about $29,000, before the installation of taxi meters and radios. That’s in contrast with about $6,000 for a 2008 Crown Victoria.

It's all great having good intentions, lower emissions and even improved fuel economy but at the end of the day price matters. If that cab company could purchase 4 traditional cabs over 1 Prius, then it's a hard sell. We use different vehicles over here but the same similarities in costs are at play.

 

The negative comments at the bottom of the article are so typical...

 

lol, you mean some knob saying "hey in Europe we have diesels that get 70 mpg"?

 

Without noticing that g is different, yes.

 

Or that those diesels don't have half the room.

 

Well the Skoda Octavia Greenline II does get virtually identical mpg's to the Prius and is a similar size BUT it's a manual and has 105bhp and a 0-60 of about 13 seconds. It also has an 18 month waiting list and is almost impossible to get hold of. It also costs about the same as a Prius.

So yes some diesels can get similar to a Prius - just and with some compromise.

 

Highway hi-speed and with absolutely no town involved, yes.
Not even close when shop/service costs show up. There TDIs love being well serviced.

 

With lower gas prices and plenty of police cruisers available, one might expect that there's little incentive.

However:

Difference of $25,000. $3.349/gal. 12mpg v 30mpg.
Miles to break even 149,299. (Excluding interest etc)

For high mileage cabs that 150k miles is nothing and I'd expect it'd pay back in a few years, even with higher insurance and opportunity cost.

As well as the same inertia you see in other cabbies, I really think those Crown Vics live on due to taxi leasing. If leasing companies had to pay for the petrol, the Crown Vics would disappear very quickly from all but low mileage fleets.

 

That applies here. Drivers who work for a company have to pay their own fuel (otherwise there'd be massive theft going on), so fuel consumption isn't really an issue to the company buying the car - just purchase cost and maintenance.

To an owner driver (like me ) the bigger picture applies and I work on total ownership costs and that's why the Prius pays (despite the odd hiccup). In fact, the days of being the only Prius in town might be coming to an end soon. A few drivers are seriously considering the jump from diesel to hybrid. Was parked up with other drivers the other night and the topic of fuel economy came up again (petrol is now 9p/14c a litre less than diesel) and we all compared fuel economy stats - some were 27 mpg, some even 39mpg but I won them over with 56 mpg(uk) for that nights economy - and they know how I drive!

So that weird looking Japanese car is now a serious consideration for them. It does more mpg's and petrol is cheaper too. It's a no brainer.

 

It seems that even a 2012 Yaris has better numbers than a 2012 Passat TDI!

 

The first one sold here on Guam is being run by a small Cab Company. With gas off base at $4.67 / US Gallon, it makes a lot of sense!

 

See them all the time in New York City.

 

How about this?

2012 Toyota Prius V NYC Taxi | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

Yes, I saw a green and white one on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood Saturday night.