Taxi Drivers Suing NYC over the Nissan NV200 - UPDATE

[LongBeachCoupe]

Nyc tlc yellow cabs are the only ones allowed to pick up street fares. Dial cars are on call only. I know tons about nyc medallions from investments in them. They are not currently issued and are really not available. Consolidated market most are owned by a few people. There's around 13000 I think. Value is around 1.1mm eaxh

[AZhitman]

...and, the whining continues. Looks like they're grasping at the last available straw:

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB1 ... reno64-wsj

Wonder why, in the 2-year process, no one brought this up before?

[float_6969]

OK, so let me get this straight, they're mad because they don't have a choice of vehicles. So what they're saying is that if the city had said they had to choose between the NV200 and the Ford Transit Connect (which is more expensive, and gets poorer fuel economy, so they all would have bought the Nissan anyway) then none of this would have happened?

[AZhitman]

Actually, they've ALWAYS had limited choices. That hasn't changed.

God forbid they benefit from the economies of scale of uniformity. Then again, I'm sure there's not many degreed economists in that group.

[audtatious]

It's NYC, why do you and others expect common sense and logical discussion?

[float_6969]

LOL!!!

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Eh, I could see people being upset being told its the only thing they can drive... but not really to this extent.

I mean, picture the extreme absurd--> If you were told that from now on, you HAD to drive a smart car, regardless of how big you were, etc... that would suck.

With the amount of time that they spend in their "office", I would think they should be able to get something they like.
I could see if one company did it, then you could just say "oh well, I don't like that car, I'm going to go work for xxxx guy", but this is a city-wide policy? Just seems odd to mandate.

[audtatious]

The whole deal of locking up a whole industry with 1 million dollar medallions needed per cab is friggen retarded. Then again, it's NY. They probably blame it on Bush.

[Heavy]

im all for the NV, sure beats the hell out of riding in a f*** prius

[AZhitman]

Newest update, and it looks like the whiners are going to get their way again:

Due to a little-known section of the city’s administrative code requiring that the city “shall approve one or more hybrid electric vehicle models for use as a taxicab,” the non-hybrid Taxi of Tomorrow may never make its street debut.

Nissan has plans in place to make an NV200 hybrid, but not in time to satisfy the requirements of the administrative code...

Somehow, this little detail slipped past Nissan's legal team and researchers - This could cost the company a BILLION dollars.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

They should probably hurry up with that hybrid, even if it offers no gains whatsoever.

[float_6969]

It can't be THAT hard to put a hybrid drive-train together, can it?

[Jesda]

That city is a sewer anyway. Force all of the ants into a single Smart car for all I care.

I'd rather be in Memphis or Detroit, and neither of those towns are particularly nice.

[Dattebayo]

It can't be THAT hard to put a hybrid drive-train together, can it?

Seriously, cut your losses and put a whole factory into fabbing up a few just to look good on paper.

[Jesda]

That city is a sewer anyway. Force all of the ants into a single Smart car for all I care.

I'd rather be in Memphis or Detroit, and neither of those towns are particularly nice.

Damn bro, you mad?

[sx moneypit]

[WDRacing]

That city is a sewer anyway. Force all of the ants into a single Smart car for all I care.

I'd rather be in Memphis or Detroit, and neither of those towns are particularly nice.

Damn bro, you mad?

I'm so confused

[AZhitman]

It can't be THAT hard to put a hybrid drive-train together, can it?

Seriously, cut your losses and put a whole factory into fabbing up a few just to look good on paper.

Sorry, we're building CrossCabriolets.

[AZhitman]

I'm so confused

Honest Jesda, meet Drunk Jesda. Drunk Jesda, meet Honest Jesda.

[float_6969]

LMAO!

[AZhitman]

Looks like the group bringing the lawsuit just wants to b****... Doesn't seem they're too interested in a resolution that doesn't involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater... big surprise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/nyreg ... -rule.html

[Ace2cool]

Typical New York mindset IMHO.

[AZhitman]

This thing keeps getting more and more silly by the day.

"Supreme Court Justice Shlomo Hagler seemed unimpressed with the NV200, and said the Taxi & Limousine Commission plan to replace new yellow medallion cabs with Nissan NV200 or more expensive hybrids should be called 'the Taxi of Yesterday.'"

I'm sure glad Shlomo is such an expert on taxis (or vehicles in general).

[Bubba1]

I kinda miss those ancient Checker cabs. Yes, they were butt ugly, but they were awesome to ride in with insane amounts of room, distinctive, mechanically simple, reliable, and built like tanks. If I recall, there was a similar griping back when the smaller (compared to the Checker) Crown Vics/Caprices were pushed on the medallion owners who loved the status quo.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I'm sure glad Shlomo is such an expert on taxis (or vehicles in general).

Yeah. This is hilarious. I love that "important" people in powerful positions suddenly become experts on all things if nobody bothers to put forth the effort to check their BS.

[IBCoupe]

Either way, they are contract employees unless they are sole owner-operators of their own company (in which case the whole thing doesn't matter...)

It actually still does matter, because of the way NYC taxi licensing works. The city offers a limited number of "medallions" for taxi operators. Anyone who wants a medallion must conform to the City's requirements. Which means no buying your own fleet of used Crown Vics and calling yourself a taxi company. They use this to enforce things like handicap-accessibility. But it also enforces this single-vehicle "deal."

This is how I understand it, at least. I could be wrong.

I'm not sure if other livery/chauffer services use the medallion system as well, though, so you might be able to use that as a loophole.

That's similar to how it is in most places. I worked a summer for CT DOT's legal department and one of the major tasks I was handed was to conduct a review of Connecticut's Taxi, Livery, and Motorbus regulations (and see if there wasn't some way to offload it to some other State agency). It's similar to most states where you have to apply for permission to run a cab company, and then you've got to get FBI background checks for each of your drivers... lots of requirements, and it's a pain. Same rules apply for livery companies, and there are similar rules for motorcoaches, but because most private bus lines are interstate affairs, there's federal regulations a State has to work around. If I remember my comparative research, New York worked the same way as Connecticut except that New York City was given its own gaping hole the state law to do what it liked because of its unique market features.

Libertarians and taxi/livery start-ups hate the scheme, and I sympathized with them (to the point of detailing Maine's relatively recent approach - complete deregulation at the state level - for my superiors at CT DOT) until I started traveling abroad, where you get the sense that taxis aren't private entrepreneurs so much as they're actually a part of local mass transit. In Shanghai, you can use the same public transit card for the metro, buses, and taxis. No cash necessary. It begins to make sense that it would be so limited.

[lne937s]

The Nissan Taxi of Tomorrow contract is back on, based on new ruling.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-1 ... -says.html

New York’s plan for a new fleet of cabs from Nissan Motor Co. (7201) is legal, an appeals court ruled, overturning a judge who said the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission overstepped its authority by requiring owners to buy a specific vehicle.

The so-called Taxi of Tomorrow program is a “legally appropriate response to the agency’s statutory obligation to produce a 21st-century taxicab consistent with the broad interests and perspectives that the agency is charged with protecting,” Justice David B. Saxe wrote today for the appeals court in Manhattan.

Nissan won a contract in 2011 valued at $1 billion over 10 years to supply more than 15,000 minivans with sliding doors, more luggage space and airbags in the back, for the city’s taxi fleet. The commission in September 2012 designated the Nissan NV200 as the official “Taxi of Tomorrow” and required owners of medallions, which confer the right to operate yellow cabs in New York, to buy the $29,700 vehicles.

Taxi fleet operators sued the city in December 2012 seeking to block the requirement, and a judge halted the program five months later, saying it violated the administrative code because it didn’t allow medallion owners to buy hybrid vehicles. The city then revised the rules to let medallion owners buy hybrids until Nissan develops a hybrid version of the NV200.

[AZhitman]

Good catch. Eager to see how this shakes out.

[darylzero]

Motorweek just did a review on the NV200. These are now on the road in NY. I didn't realize these were going to use a CVT. Taxi drivers should really put the CVT's to a reliability test.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJvDjJlwbco[/youtube]

http://www.motorweek.org/reviews/road_t ... nv200_taxi

[Heavy]

I was able to flag one of these things down about a week ago... It's not horrible, mass amount of room unlike those craptastic hybrid camrys they have now. Was nice to be able to charge my phone in the cab and have a huge moonroof to look out of. The styling and the performance on the other hand is crap. The driver tried to make a few quick moves and it went nowhere fast. I'll keep the crown vic and all of its outdated glory.