San Francisco Mayor Signs Alternative-Fuel Taxi Legislation
08 March 2008
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed legislation that will enable the purchase of more alternative-fuel taxi cabs for use on San Francisco streets.
Specifically, the legislation amends the San Francisco Police code by raising the taxicab gate cap to $96.50 and ratifies gate fees—the money drivers pay each time they take a cab out of the garage and a major source of taxi company revenue—previously charged up to $91.50 per shift for the period of January 1, 2003 to October 27 2006. It authorizes a $7.50 surcharge on the gate cap for low emission vehicles and requires taxi companies to reduce average per vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2012.
(In 2002, then-Supervisor Newsom was the only San Francisco Supervisor to vote against an increase of the gate fee cap from $83.50 to the current $91.50.)
Mayor Newsom’s 2006 State of the City Address challenged the Taxi Commission to create a 100% “green” taxi fleet. Approximately 15% of today’s fleet is either Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) or hybrid vehicles. This legislation is expected to increase that percentage to 100% by 2011.
I would like to see something like a CNG Escape hybrid taxi. Very clean and efficient with room for all the luggage.
Posted by: sjc | 08 March 2008 at 10:53 AM
sic
I am not sure the CNG will be ever a solution for US, production has reached its peak in 2000 in north america (and price has followed), importing it massively from Russia or Iran is unlikely to happen for obvious reason, CNG cost 5 to 10 times more to transport than oil. So unless you develop a biomethane infrastructure, I don't think CNG powered vehicle will be massively deployed. Unfortunately since CNG is the cleaneast fuel and can be burned with high efficiency given its high octane index and gazeous nature...unfortunately. But it all the Taxis where HEV that would already be a huge progress.
Unfortunately Taxis driver are poorly informed, it happened that I recently talked with a taxi driver in SF, while he was oppened to the idea of the hybrid, he had absolutely no clue of how much gas he could save if he had a Prius instead of it is Ford Crown, when you think of it he could slash is gas consumption by 70% since this is mainly city driving, that's a huge saving of money over a year as well as pollution.
Unforntunately PHEV and HEV are not suited for Taxis purpose. Clean diesel Hybrid would be the best trade-off
Posted by: Treehugger | 08 March 2008 at 02:12 PM
hoope, read EV in my last sentence not HEV
Posted by: Treehugger | 08 March 2008 at 02:14 PM
PHEV using something like AltairNano batteries and high-power chargers would be good for taxi service if there were chargers at all taxi stands. It would also allow the vehicle to wait for fares with the engine off and full climate control.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 08 March 2008 at 04:23 PM
The fast rechargeable battery is a myth, first of all the number of cycles in deep discharge is limited, 2000 at best if you do it 3 times a day the battery will be dead in less than 2 years, given the cost of the battery it doesn't look promosing unless EESTOR keeps his promise.... 2nd to recharge a battery of 15Kwh in 10mn would require recharging station capable of delivering 90Kwh of power, possible but not really practical, plus the grid would have problem to maitain its stability with such sudden peak of demand.
Posted by: Treehugger | 08 March 2008 at 05:18 PM
I am talking about a solution, just cleaner exhaust in San Francisco. But since your opinion is so strong, I will assume that you are dead wrong :)
Posted by: sjc | 08 March 2008 at 05:22 PM
For those of you keeping track, 10C rate is 6 minutes from empty to full. Power requirements are manageable; if a taxi had a Volt-equivalent 16 kWh battery pack, it could fully charge it in 20 minutes with 480 V 100 A 3 phase, half charge in 10 minutes.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 08 March 2008 at 06:25 PM
Since no one seems to be interested in how the legislation will affect GHG emissions today and not X years down the road using Y non-production technology, allow me to return to the topic. I fail to see how this change will encourage more hybrid use. Raising gate fees on the already financially strained drivers in hopes that cab companies will buy new vehicles seems like a huge giveaway to the cab companies. Why not do what NYC does and charge less for medallions that can only be used on hybrid vehicles??? It's already proven to be effective.
Posted by: bluegreen | 09 March 2008 at 10:19 AM
There are lots of ways to encourage the use of CNG and hybrids. Right now there are about 150,000 CNG vehicles out of 150 million vehicles in the U.S. That is only 1 in 1000. You could add 1 million CNG cars and only increase NG usage in the U.S. about 1%.
It is much cleaner and domestically produced. 85% of the NG used in the U.S. is produced here compared with 35% of the oil we use being produced here. If homes and buildings were solar thermally heated and cooled, we could easily save enough NG to run 1 million cars.
Combine that with a price floor for NG and it becomes viable to synthesize NG from biomass through gasification. There have been projects all across the U.S. in the last decade showing that this is not only possible, but profitable.
Posted by: sjc | 09 March 2008 at 12:01 PM
Engineer-Poet
Maybe Altairnano is the answer, though thay haven't shown much lately following their trumpetting claims in 2006.
sic
US is now a net importer of NG, more and moar NG is imported essentialy from Quatar. Agree we could save on heating use with better insulation and we could make natural gas using biomass through a simple and efficient process (contray to ethanol where the process is complicated and inefficient). Still to build an infrastructure to bring the NG from the farm to cities but OK.
Posted by: Treehugger | 09 March 2008 at 01:42 PM
An area 10 miles by 10 miles as about 600,000 acres. With 5 tons of biomass and 100 therms per ton, each acre can yield 500 therms of gasified methane. That is 300 million therms or enough for more than 500,000 cars driving 10,000 miles per year. It does not get much more renewable than that. You do not have to transport the biomass more than 10 miles and you can pipe the finished product right to your garage.
Posted by: sjc | 09 March 2008 at 05:56 PM
Even if your figures are correct (they're within reason by my checks) it would require 100 mi² * 200 million / 500,000 = 40,000 mi² = 25.6 million acres of land to supply the current US vehicle fleet, displacing a considerable amount of cropland and leaving nothing to replace depleting supplies of NG and coal for electric generation. I think we're going to need to squeeze more out of the land resource, especially as climate change reduces the fraction with enough rainfall to be arable.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 09 March 2008 at 09:55 PM
It is actually more like 33 x 33 miles to get 600,000 acres, but that is 600,000 acres of the 90 million acres that are in corn production already. You are just using the corn stalks and cobs not the corn. The corn is used for food and feed.
Posted by: sjc | 09 March 2008 at 10:37 PM
I am not saying that SNG will replace all fossil NG, we get 85% of our fossil NG right now domestically. But using the stalks and cobs from the corn that we already grow would power 1/3 of our automobiles in a CO2 neutral sustainable fashion, reduce foreign oil purchases and clean up the air.
Posted by: sjc | 09 March 2008 at 10:54 PM