Ford Escape hybrid taxis top 175,000 miles

There have been eighteen Ford Focus Hybrids operating as New York City taxis for about two years now. Each of the vehicles in the fleet has now exceeded 175,000 miles in service. That's the equivalent of eleven years of typical driving for average customers. Since urban driving of the type done by New York city taxis is the optimal operating condition for hybrid vehicles, they have saved an estimated $250,000 in fuel costs.
[Source: Ford]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
stevefazek 12:29AM (3/20/2008)
Cell phones, Laptops, IPODS, produce hundreds of million used batteries a year and they the vast majority are recycled. Not because of the environmental impacts but because they contain valuable chemicals.
The average car battery has around 5-10 bucks worth of lead in it. Hell even a Catalytic converter contains around 10 bucks of platinum in it.
You old computer has 20 dollars worth of gold in it.
Yes it cost around 60% of the value to recover these raw materials but its worth it on large scale. So dont go out and buy some cyanide in an attempt to get rich extracting the metals.
The first prius taxi cab in canada saw 300,000 miles and its batteries where still at 75% capacity. I would say thats pretty damn good.
I would love to see a Rubidium based battery but if LI explosions scare you if they ever built a battery based on Rubidium if it failed it would be about 14 times as powerfull. To bad its such a rare element :(
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Ian 2:04PM (7/06/2009)
It is not rare, just not processed. How would the rb battery work?
Darlene 1:53PM (1/26/2009)
We are considering buying a 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid with 61K miles on it. Do you know if there is an extended warranty available to purchase for the batteries? Also can individual batteries be replaced on this vehicle if one or two fail or does the entire battery system have to be replaced?
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Heidi 7:51AM (2/01/2009)
Let me know if you hear anything about this - we're thinking of buying a used 2006 escape hybrid w/45,000 miles. I've never bought a hybrid before, never bought used before so this is new territory for us.
Darlene 7:32PM (2/01/2009)
Found out the entire battery must be replaced at cost now of $8,000. Don't know what cost will be a few years down the road, it might be cheaper. The battery cannot be replaced one module at a time. If you do buy a hybrid, just remember that to keep the battery charged the more stop and go traffic the better. The battery is recharged each time you brake so do some braking each time you drive.
Brian noon 4:05PM (3/21/2009)
where can I find Hybrid taxis? costs?
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Peter 2:24PM (4/03/2007)
So they saved more than $13k per car or around 8 cents per mile. Suddenly the $3200 price premium over a standard V6 Escape doesn't look so bad.
Are any of the Prius taxi fleets releasing similar information? The Prius costs less than the Escape initially and gets 70% better mileage.
Even more fun with numbers: their mileage works out to an average of 240 miles per day... and the Tesla Roadster looks pretty good in yellow...
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Greenline 3:27PM (4/03/2007)
There is no way they still look that nice - any shots of one of them after the 2 years?
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gregger 7:06PM (4/03/2007)
You mean Escape hybrids...
So, the RSS feed here seems broken, and the Tips form appears to reload the page and doesn't say whether or not your tip was submitted. That happens at AutoBlog too. I tried to submit a link for an Amazon.com item... a $800k cat-back exhaust system.
TTFN
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Don 8:19PM (4/03/2007)
That's awesome...until you have to tear out and dispose of the nickel metal hydride batteries.
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Chris M 11:00PM (4/03/2007)
Don, you really don't know? Those NiMH batteries should last longer than 10 years. There are 10 year old Priuses running around Japan, still using their original NiMH batteries. There are Prius taxis that have gone over 200,000 miles and are still using their original NiMH batteries. With proper battery management, NiMH batteries will last a very very long time.
With less annual maintenance costs (less brake wear, less engine running, fewer oil changes) and annual fuel savings ($13K) that exceed the cost of the battery pack (est. $3K) they could afford to replace the batteries every year, but THEY DON'T HAVE TO!
Those stupid anti-hybrid myths persist in the face of all the evidence.
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Scott 10:54AM (4/04/2007)
Disposing of the batteries is probably just another part of the complicated recycling process that all junked cars go through. I don't see why people feel that it adds any problem. Current car batteries get recycled, why the issue w/ recycling hybrid batteries?
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gregger 2:23PM (4/04/2007)
Also, how many freaking laptop batteries are out there? Probably quite a few more than the hybrids. The problem's been around for years and years, I don't see why it's any different with a hybrid vs. a laptop. Computers pose a HUGE recycling problem as well.
TTFN
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