Hello everyone. I just joined up today within a week of putting my recently acquired 2005 on the line as a taxi. Wish me luck in the endeavor. Scott P.S. Sorry about the quality of the cell phone pics - I'll try to get some better ones when my roomie gets back with her 7 megapixel camera
Welcome to PriusChat, Scott. I presume you've read about some of the other Prius taxis around the world. Best of luck!
Great Luck to you Scott! I have often thought the Prius would make a great taxi! My best milage is when I am in the stop & go around town. BTW, I heard last week that all taxis in San Francisco will be Hybids in 4 years by a city ordinance. Did I hear right?:noidea: Lee
Congrats! We have tons of Prius (and Camry Hybrid) cabs around here. Glad to see that other folks are jumping in too! The Hybrid Experience Report They haven't updated that site since 2005 but you can read up on the 2001 Prius with 410,000km (right now, we have 04/05 models with that kind of mileage already). You can also see the service record of the world's first hybrid (and Prius) taxi.
This post doesn't ring true to me. He claims to be a taxi driver, but yet he speaks English. I'm not buying it. :suspicious: Tom
The taxi looks great... but wait... he learned his english from watching years of reruns of Three's Company, Dallas, Dynasty, Knot's Landing and Seinfeld.
Scott: Welcome to Prius chat. I drove a taxi myself here in the Tampa Bay area from 2003 to 2006. I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you. I hope you don't mind.... Was it hard to get the meter installed as well as computer and radio due to limited space? Here in Tampa, cabbies have meters (as mostly everything is meter rate) and all dispacted calls come out via computer. So the dispacter is only used if there is some sort of problem. How has luggage been? Have you had any issues? My main concern about using a Prius as a cab is if you get airport runs with three or four passengers. all w/ luggage. Most of the cabs here are Ford Crown Vics or Chevy Malibus. Some drive vans like the Dodge Astro. That being said, do you stand in line at ATL? One piece of advice. Don't shut your car "off" inbetween fares while your sitting, especially if you don't need to run the A/C or heater. When you start a Prius, the ICE will run to get that catalytic converter running, even its for 30 sec. I hate that!! I think you will get very good gas mileage as you will probably have the car "on" for 10 to 12 hours a day and won't experience frequent warm-up periods and short trips. I wish you the very best of luck!!
