Public Transportation...

In May 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that all NYC taxis would be hybrid by 2012. The city is on its way toward that goal a year later, though a bit off the pace, with 1020 hybrid hacks in the city, or about 8% of the 13,150 cabs on the streets.

Almost all (845) of the hybrid taxis are Ford Escapes. The next model on the list is the Toyota Highlander, another SUV, with a mere 92 ferrying people around town. The rest of the hybrid vehicles currently in use by cabbies, including the otherwise popular Prius, have only a few engines idling silently at airports.

According to an article in the New York Times, the switch has made more than an ecological impact for the early adopters. The cabbie who talked to the reporter says his Escape saves him $25 a week in gas over the Crown Victoria he proviously drove.

New York is no stranger to avant-garde taxi technology: in 1896, the city had an all-electric-powered fleet. And appropriately enough, the first-ever speeding ticket was issued to a New York cabbie in 1899. Jacob German of the Electric Vehicle Company was stopped for tearing ass around the city at 12 mph. Retrospectively, he was doing all right, since the current average speed in cross-town Manhattan traffic is 6 mph or so.

Photo credit: Edward Reed