Green Taxis: Eco Taxi

One of the toughest parts of public transportation is that it is a point to point system and to go anywhere too far from stations or at odd hours can be very difficult. In DC public transportation only run till 3AM and bus service till around midnight. In New York City the Subway runs all the time but buses do stop overnight. Even in Europe I have run into some stations don’t have trains running to them after certain hours and needing to get a cab to safely and quickly get to where I needed to go. If you are looking for green way to travel in a city you don’t always have as many options as you would like. Some cities do now have hybrid taxis though that help give another alternative. In Berlin Eco Taxi is a great alternative for transportation, they have over 700 taxis on the road. Be warned most of their website is in German but I will highlight some of their green, forward thinking.

The city has over 4,500 cabs and EcoTaxi has a sizable portion of the cities total. The company currently dispatches up to 750,000 calls/month. The company also uses solar panels at their dispatch center and using electro docking stations for electronic vehicles.

Currently a large portion of their fleet is Hybrid cars like a Toyota Prius or vehicles using natural gas that have lower emissions.

Quote:
Our system is sustainable cause every car is controlled automatically with a Vodafone sim card (M2M)

This Video shows how Vodafone helps to dispatch taxis in Hanover, Germany. The same system is being used by Eco Taxi in Berlin and in other cities.

With Eco Taxi a customer gets the next available taxi. This system works best when there are lots of green taxis from one fleet to quickly get to the next customer. Eco Taxi customers have a few ways to get a taxi, they can call the taxi phone number or with the Berlin Taxi iPhone app. This app will be updated shortly for other types of smart phones.

In trying to find out how efficient public versus private transportation is I came across this post showing how various transportation's stack up in the USA.  While I am sure European transportation is slightly more efficient than in the USA, but the charts show that a hybrid car is more efficient than most forms of public transportation. There are still times when the cab will be driven to its next destination or idling, but this is still much more efficient than a regular a cab and is probably not much worse than some public transportation systems. Especially when you consider that it can bring you directly from point A to B.

Green Taxis are not overly popular yet but as time goes on they can give us another way to travel in a environmentally conscience way. Currently the Green taxis are gaining in usage but some places are still behind like, Canada, UK, or South America. Even New York City had plans to make every cab a hybrid or better got struck down by the Supreme Court. 

In Europe Munich and Zurich also have Eco Taxis bit only around 100 taxis, so there is a lot of room for growth. Eco Taxi promises to have more maps of all the towns it serves but right now they only serve 3 cities in Europe. This company has a good green business plan and is definitely worth trying out.

Other links:

http://www.taxi-berlin.de/taxibestellung/app/%20

http://www.taxi-berlin.de/

Large Trucks to Face Tougher MPG Standards

Just a few weeks after Obama administration announced tougher standards on cars and trucks they now have announced increased MPG standards for larger trucks as well. This will cover larger vehicles like dump trucks, tractor trailers, fire engine, etc. The amount of the cuts varies by types of vehicles from 9% up to 23% so this is not insignificant. Though with some older semi trucks only get 4-8 MPG even a 23% increase will only mean a 2 MPG increase. While that will save significant amounts of fuel it would still be much more efficient to transport this all by train. Overall it is a good start and important for all vehicles that use fuels to increase their efficiency, especially those that are on the roads everyday for long hours.


From WBOC (AP)

"The White House projected savings of 530 million barrels of oil and $50 billion in fuel costs over the expected lives of the vehicles covered by the new standards, along with improved air quality and public health.”

GOP and their war on the Environment

This is a good article on how far we have to come to convince the rest of America about the damage we cause with our policies. The conservative GOP has gone too far tin their support of business and the status quo. After many years of no improvements in fuel economy, we are not beginning to see some real innovation out of Detroit. This has led to Ford retooling their standard engine and GM starting to get into hybrid and battery powered vehicles. None of this would have happened had the government not moved the standard on these companies. The new Ford new engine with ecoboost will improve fuel economy on the cars and trucks it is used on. The Ford Explorer will now be the most fuel efficient SUV in its class . If the GOP gets its way and limits the powers that the EPA and other environmental agencies have we could be set back in the development while other countries pass us by.

Improved Fuel Economy

Come 2025 vehicle fuel economy will be greatly enhanced based on what we have today. Today the Obama administration reached an agreement according to the Washington Post that will set the new USA standard for average MPG vehicles must obtain. Under this agreement vehicles would be averaging 54.4 MPG, which would about double the current fuel economy. This does not meet the goals of some environmental groups but it is still an major improvement from today’s standards. This follows along with Obama’s administrations 2009 deal that cover 2012-2016.