Study finds NYC Clean Air Taxi rules successful in cutting pollution

New York City Clean Air Taxi rules are successful in cutting emissions and reducing air pollution, https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/clean-air-taxis-cut-pollution-new-york-city-study to a new study by researchers at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Drexel University. Between 2009 and 2015, the legislation more than doubled the fuel efficiency of the fleet of 13,500 yellow taxis, leading to estimated declines in air pollution emissions. The findings are published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology.

The scientists report that overall fuel efficiency of the medallion taxi fleet climbed from 15.7 to 33.1 mpg, and corresponding estimates of nitric oxide (NO) and total particulate (PMT) exhaust emissions declined by 82% and 49%, respectively. They also found these emission reductions were associated with decreases in concentrations of pollutants in the city’s air.

Introduced in 2006, Clean Air Taxi legislation mandated that at least 9% of new medallions for yellow taxis be set aside for hybrid or compressed natural gas vehicles, and incentivized the purchase of low-emission taxis by extending the allowed period of models classified as “clean air” by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air Taxi laws do not regulate the city’s 100,000 for-hire vehicles such as Ubers and Lyfts which are governed by separate laws and regulations.

The past decade has seen steady improvements in the quality of air in New York City, and clean-air taxis appear to be one contributing factor.

—Dustin Fry, MPH, a researcher at Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health

The researchers created maps to measure taxi traffic intensity across the city and used inspection and trip data to approximate taxi-related exhaust emissions of two major sources of air pollution: nitric oxide and particulate matter. They then used New York City Community Air Survey data collected at more than 100 monitoring sites across the city to estimate the impact of these changes.

The biggest effect was seen in Manhattan neighborhoods with a high density of yellow taxis—not in low-income and outer borough areas with elevated rates of respiratory illness. The authors say this finding suggests other policies are needed to make meaningful advances in improving respiratory health.

This study provides evidence that air pollution legislation can have real impact. Even though overall, yellow taxis account for a small proportion of vehicular miles traveled on New York City’s streets, in midtown they account for almost half. Similar regulations targeting other vehicles could make an even bigger difference.

—co-author Frederica Perera, PhD, professor of environmental health sciences and director of Translational Research at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health

Additional authors include Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, Christian A. Treat, David Evans, Kimberly R. Burke, Daniel Carrion at the Columbia Mailman School and Columbia University Irving Medical Center; and Loni P. Tabb, Gina S. Lovasi at Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health.

The research was conducted in collaboration with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and was financed by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (P50ES09600), the NIEHS Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan (P30ES009089), the John and Wendy Neu Family Foundation, and the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Foundation.

Mistrust in Self-Driving Cars is on the Rise: AAA Study

An American Automobile Association’s (AAA) study has revealed shifting attitudes with self-driving cars.

According to the study, 73 percent of American drivers are afraid of riding in an autonomous vehicle, signaling a 10 percent jump from a January study, with two-thirds reporting feeling less safe if they were to share the road with one. Millennials surveyed posted the most significant shift, with 64 percent reporting in the negative over a late 2017 figure of 49 percent.

“Despite their potential to make our roads safer, in the long run, consumers have high expectations for safety,” said Greg Brannon, director of Automotive Engineering and Industry Relations at AAA. “Our results show that any incident involving an autonomous vehicle is likely to shake consumer trust, which is a critical component to the widespread acceptance of autonomous vehicles.”

The shifts in attitudes could be attributed to the slate of well-publicized crashes involving autonomous vehicles, including an Uber self-driving program vehicle killing an Arizona pedestrian last March, a non-fatal Tesla Model S crash in Utah, and a Model X crash in California where its Autopilot system was scrutinized.

The AAA used randomly selected 1,014 adults to complete the survey, with a 4 percent plus or minus margin of error.

Maven Says Uber and Lyft Drivers Love Chevy Bolt

General Motor’s Maven car sharing unit finds that Uber and Lyft drivers love the Chevy Bolt and are putting a lot of miles behind the wheel.

Rachel Bhattacharya, who heads GM’s commercial mobility unit, spoke about it yesterday at a CAR Management Briefing Seminar in Traverse City, Mich.

The Maven fleet brought in 150 Bolts during May, and has 250 more on order.

Bolt rentals have done very well through the Maven Gig program, where ride-hailing and delivery service drivers rent a Maven vehicle for a week at a time. Maven Gig launched in May in San Diego and has expanded to San Francisco.

Drivers pay more for the Chevy Bolt under the program than they would under other Maven rentals; but they end up saving money on fuel costs.

Drivers pay $229 for the weekly rental, which covers insurance, maintenance, and charging. It’s about $40 more than other rentals, but drivers end up saving about $70 a week on fuelcosts, the GM executive said.

“Early interest has been phenomenal,” Bhattacharya said. “For most of them, it’s not about environmentalism. It’s about fuel savings.”

It’s taken off in the past three months. The GM mobility executive said that drivers are putting an average of 30 percent more miles in the Bolt than while driving cars with internal combustion engines.

Maven customers have put in more than 1 million miles during their Bolt rentals since the offer was launched in May.

The car sharing service is doing business now in 17 North America since its startup 18 months ago. Besides Maven Gig, the Maven Home service has done well with customers living in apartment and condo complexes and needing short trips in a shared rental car.

Bhattacharya said established brands like Zipcar helped open the door for Maven.

GM has the advantage of getting young consumers to try out car sharing services and its own vehicle products, which could the first car they end up buying.

It’a also setting the stage for testing self-driving Bolts through its partnership with Lyft and through its Maven subsidiary,

“The whole goal of Maven is we’re the learning laboratory for General Motors as we’re preparing for an autonomous future,” she said. “We’re still very much in startup mode, but we’ve had some positive results to date.”

GM Readying Thousands Of Self-Driving Bolts For 2018

General Motors plans to be the first company to bring thousands of self-driving vehicles to roads through its partnership with ride-hailing firm Lyft.

Two sources familiar with GM’s plan told Reuters last week that thousands of self-driving all-electric Chevrolet Bolts will roll out by 2018, with most of them going to Lyft.

The automakers has no immediate plans to sell autonomous Bolts to the public, the sources said.

Lyft declined to comment, but GM hasn’t denied the report.

“We do not provide specific details on potential future products or technology rollout plans. We have said that our AV (autonomous vehicle) technology will appear in an on-demand ride sharing network application sooner than you might think,” GM said in a Friday statement.

So far, Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving car subsidiary has the most autonomous vehicles on the roads with about 60 being tested in four states. Ford has a similar plan to GM’s with self-driving ride sharing fleets scheduled to come out in 2021. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will be providing a few Chrysler Pacificas to Waymo for conversion to self-driving test minivans.

Reuters, which broke the story Friday, thinks that its November interview with GM executive Mike Abelson shed some light on the subject. Though he isn’t the first company executive to discuss GM’s AV strategy, with several of them acknowledging during interviews that self-driving cars will be mass produced and deployed in mobility fleets. Details on scale of production and timing of deployment were left out.

Ableson told Reuters that GM carsharing service Maven will likely be included in the roll out of self-driving Bolts for fleet testing. Maven and Lyft are likely to find more business opportunities with the first wave of more costly autonomous vehicles.

“If you assume the cost of these autonomous vehicles, the very early ones, will be six figures, there aren’t very many retail customers that are willing to go out and spend that kind of money,” Ableson said. “But even at that sort of cost, with a ride sharing platform, you can build a business.”

In December, the company revealed that fully automated Bolts will starting being built in early 2017 at GM’s Orion Township plant in the Detroit area. Testing of about 40 self-driving Bolts will also come to Detroit this year after the first wave was tried out in San Francisco and Scottsdale, Ariz.

Abelson suggested in his November interview that GM could be uniquely positioned to engineer, manufacture, and test out AVs at a high-volume scale.

“If you take those three things, no one company has all three,” he said.

Abelson thinks that GM having a stake in Lyft, launching Maven, and last year acquiring AV technology startup Cruise Automation, could be a tipping point in GM’s favor in leading the way in the nascent technology.

“Cruise, Lyft, Maven are all bringing different parts of this singular solution around autonomous on-demand networks in urban environments,” he said.

Reuters, HybridCars.com

London Taxi Company Sets Its Sights On Other European Cities

The London Taxi Company is looking to expand its market. The company is owned by Chinese automaker Geely, the same company that also owns Volvo. It has recently completed a $400,000,000 upgrade to the factory where it builds its TX5 plug-in hybrid taxi for use in London. It thinks those cabs, with their wide doors, plentiful interior room, and low emissions would also work just fine in other cities.

The company is looking at such cities as Barcelona, Oslo, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Last week, it took its new TX5 plug-in hybrid to Paris, where concerns about persistent smog are unusually high. Paris recently announced plans to ban cars built prior to 1997 from its roads during week days. Those cars account for only 10% of all vehicles in use in and around Paris, but are responsible for more than 40% of its transportation related carbon emissions. Many of them are diesels with rudimentary pollution controls. Diesels emit particulates and nitrous oxide, both of which are major components of smog.

“Most of the major cities in Europe have an air-pollution problem,” said Peter Johansen, head of the taxi manufacturer. He says limited range “is what has stopped until now the adoption of electric vehicles as the mainstay of taxis.” Since the TX5 is a plug-in hybrid, range is not a concern.

The London Taxi Company is also interested in selling its vehicles to ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. “We are offering a global product that will be a global beater,” said Johansen, who says the car can reach European markets even if the UK votes to leave the European Union on June 23, because the country is “so much part of Europe now.”

, London’s cabs aren’t the only ones going green. France’s leading taxi company, Taxis G7, and Uber Technologies now allow customers in France to order electric and hybrid vehicles on their apps. Since December, tourists can also tour Paris in a vintage Citroen 2CV retrofitted with an electric drivetrain.

Source: Automotive News  Photo credit: London Taxi Company

BYD Sold The Most Cars With Plugs In 2015

We have been talking a lot since the beginning of the year about which company sold the most electric cars in 2015. For the purposes of this story, “electric” is defined as any car with a plug, whether it is a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt or a battery electric car like the Tesla Model S.

According to Green Car Reports, BMW sold “about 30,000” of its i3 and i8 cars. Chevrolet sold approximately 20,000 Volts and Spark EVs. Ford sold a similar number of Fusion PHEV, C Max PHEV and Focus Electric cars. Nissan sold 17,269 LEAF automobiles in the US, but it also markets that car and the electric e-NV200 van in many nations around the world. Green Car Reports total sales at around 50,000 worldwide.

That leaves Tesla with 50,557 cars delivered in all markets in 2015. So that means Tesla is the plug-in champ, right? Actually, no. Tesla’s performance is extraordinary, for sure. But the global plug-in sales leader is a company most Americans have never heard of — BYD.

The Chinese company made the world’s first production plug-in hybrid, the F3DM, in December 2008, which went on sale two years before the Chevrolet Volt. The F3DM was crude compared to the Chevrolet offering, but it started the company on the road to producing more and better electric vehicles. Along the way, it got into the electric bus business, and is now one of the world’s largest manufacturers of both urban and intercity electrified buses. Its forward progress even convinced Warren Buffett to invest in the company.

BYD makes battery electric vehicles, including the E6 hatchback which is used for taxi service in several cities. Uber is using them as well in Chicago.  It also makes a variety of plug-in hybrids, including the newer Qin compact sedan and Tang compact SUV. According to the company, it delivered 31,898 Qins and 18,375 Tangs, along with 7,029 of the older E6s, during 2015. Add in a few T3 small commercial vans, some E5 battery electric compact sedans, and 2,888 compact Denza hatchbacks built as part of its joint venture with Daimler and the total comes out to be 61,722 BYD vehicles with plugs sold last year.

Just to be clear, all of those are highway capable cars. The numbers do not include any low speed neighborhood electric vehicles, although BYD produces lots of those as well. The US is celebrating a record year for new car sales, with almost 17.5 million sold. The Chinese market eclipsed that total by more than 3 million vehicles. Cadillac and Buick will both import Chinese made cars this year. The future of the car industry is taking shape now in the Orient.

Faraday Future Ask Us To Forget Everything We Know About Cars

January 5, 2016. Mark it on your calendar. That’s the date Faraday Future will unwrap its first production prototype and show the world what it has been working for so long in secrecy. To amp up the buzz ahead of the reveal, the company has released a new teaser video that asks viewer to forget everything they know about cars.

It asks questions like:

• “What if the back seat was the new front seat?”
• “What if all those cars parked in driveways had more interesting lives?”

Frankly, I have never been all that concerned about whether my car has an interesting life, any more that I worry that my refrigerator is feeling unfulfilled or my water heater suffers from Oedipal guilt. But Faraday Future is concerned about such things, apparently, and has a plan to make matters better.

On its website, Faraday Future poses existential questions like, “What if there was an electric car that not only helped preserve the environment — it actually made us look forward to the daily commute? What if such a car could redefine our relationship with the automobile itself?” Its self congratulatory rhetoric makes it seem like it is the only company on earth that ever dared look around the corner or beyond next week.

It seems clear that Faraday Future is targeting the brand new, on-demand car sharing segment of the marketplace created by autonomous driving systems. Soon, we will not own cars at all. We will simply summon the car we need when we need it via an app our smartphone. We will pay a fee to use it, then send it on its merry way when we are done. The fee-for-service model will be less expensive than buying a car, making monthly payments, paying taxes and insurance, and fixing it when it breaks down.

On the surface, that argument makes economic sense, particularly for urban dwellers who have access to multiple transportation options and probably don’t have a garage to park a car anyway. It may not work as well for people who live rural or suburban lives. And it doesn’t take into account who will dispose of the empty latte cups the last user left behind or who will plug it in so there’s enough juice in the battery for the next person.

Uber, Apple, Google, NextEV, Atieva and Tesla all have their eyes on the same market, though. What will the Faraday Future car have to offer that vehicles from those other companies do not? On January 5, we may find out.

Uber To Test Up To 200 BYD e6 Electric Crossovers In Chicago

Chinese automaker Build Your Dreams, or BYD as its better known, has pledged build nothing but plug-in cars, and its ambitions stretch beyond China’s borders. Besides a few electric buses though, vehicles bearing the BYD badge are few and far between in the USA. A new partnership with car-sharing service Uber is about to change that, at least in Chicago.

Reuters reports that Uber has already leased 25 BYD e6 electric crossovers for testing purposes in Chicago, and that number could soon expand to some 200 EVs if the pilot program proves successful.BYD launched a similar program in London last December, and the scheme sees Uber offering its low-cost UberX drivers a chance to buy or lease one of the electric crossovers for about $200 a week,. Those who decide to lease return their taxi to an Uber garage for charging after their shift, though drivers could eventually have the option of buying an e6 for themselves through a lease-to-own program operated by Green Wheels Chicago.

Never heard of the BYD e6? That’s not surprising, as the electric crossover is sold almost exclusively in China, though the automaker is making a push to get it seen as an effective fleet solution. The automaker claims an urban driving range of about 187 miles per charge, though according to the EPA’s estimates, 127 miles is a more accurate assessment of the e6’s range. The 101 horsepower electric motor isn’t likely to impress many people with its get-up-and-go, but the weekly $200 lease deal isn’t much more than the $130 to $150 a week many Uber drivers spend on gasoline alone. So getting to drive a brand new electric car for just a little more than the price of gas (which drivers themselves are responsible for) certainly has appeal for those who may have balked at the seemingly-high weekly lease price.

While BYD may be having trouble breaking into the consumer car market, if it can find success selling to fleet buyers like Uber, its long-delayed entry into the American market may finally happen.