Prius Taxis save money

Town Taxi goes green with five Toyota Prius cars
By Sage Birchwater – Williams Lake Tribune

This spring the owners of Town Taxi, Brad and Mona Niebergall, decided to go green.

They purchased five Prius hybrid cars from Heartland Toyota in May, for their taxi fleet, and they’ve already noticed a big saving in gasoline costs.

“We’ve owned propane vehicles in the past,” says Mona. “But this is our first time owning a hybrid.”

Asked if they were surprised by the fuel efficiency of the Prius, Brad gets straight to the point.

“It’s more like a shock. We’re really happy with the opportunity to try them out,” he says. “It’s proving to be a very good business decision.”

Owners of the Williams Lake cab company for 13 years this June, Brad and Mona know the ins and outs of the taxi business.

So before making their decision to make a major investment they spent a lot of time researching the Prius with other cab companies.

“We went to Vancouver and checked out Yellow Cab. They’ve got 100 hybrid vehicles. They said their hybrid cars have driven 400,000 kilometres without any major component breakdowns.”

That’s music to the Niebergalls’ ears.

“The longevity of the cars is really important to us,” Brad says. “With our old cars we were spending a lot of money repairing them. Now with nothing to fix, I’ve got more time on my hands,” he laughs.

There are a couple of features about the Prius that convinced the Niebergalls to go with the Toyota product.

“They have proven themselves with other cab companies. Prius has been out since 2000,” Mona says.

Brad says they looked at hybrids produced by other car manufacturers and they are convinced that the Toyota model gives the best gas mileage.

“The Prius has an electric primary motor and a gas secondary motor. Hybrids from other manufacturers have gas primary and electric secondary.”

He says he’s pretty pleased with the 71 miles per gallon the Prius gets in city driving and the 61 miles per gallon it gets in highway driving.

Asked whether the Prius has any trouble keeping up with regular traffic on the highway, Mona says, “No problem.”

“They’ve got more than enough power. We drove them to Vancouver to get all the taxi equipment changed over, and they had plenty of zip,” she says.

Brad says they took the five Prius cars into a taxi garage in Vancouver to get the meters, cameras, top lights and portable debit machines installed, because they were used to working with the high voltage electrics associated with the hybrid cars.

He says he is more than pleased with the service he received from the local Heartland Toyota dealer.

“Heartland did a good job getting the vehicles here,” Brad says. “They’ve been really good all the way along. We’re really happy with the service.”

Heartland’s assistant sales manager, Mike Fochuk, says Town Taxi was pretty surprised at the fuel saving of the new Prius cars.

“They said the cars were only using seven to nine litres per shift, compared up to 20 litres consumption they were used to with their conventional vehicles.”

He says a taxi often spends time idling, waiting for customers.

“A Prius is ideal for cab use. When the Prius is idling the gas motor shuts off completely.”

Fochuk says Toyota has three hybrid vehicles available now. Prius, Camry, and Highlander. Wait lists are long, however.

Another key feature of Prius is its shape, Fochuk says.

“It’s teardrop shaped, the most aerodynamic shape there is.”

He says hybrid cars are the mid-term future of Toyota’s plan for fuel efficient vehicles.

“The long term future is hydrogen,” he says. “To date one million Prius have sold since they came out in Japan in 1997 and in Canada in 1999.”