Tesla Model 3 Rapidly Becoming The Taxi Cab Of Choice In New York City.
The Tesla Model 3 is becoming more popular as a yellow cab in New York City as more people adopt the electric car after doing the math.
In October 2019, Electrek was the first to report. The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). Which oversees the city’s fleet of yellow cabs. They have approved the Tesla Model 3 as the first electric vehicle to be eligible to become a yellow cab in New York City.
It took another year after that for the first Model 3 yellow cab to hit the road.
Tesla Model 3 yellow cab is running hard on the road of NYC
As previously reported, Tesla vehicles are becoming particularly popular with taxis in Europe. Besides including in markets like the Netherlands as well. Where a fleet of over 100 Tesla vehicles operates as taxis from the airport. Amsterdam since 2014.
In North America, electric vehicles have not been as popular as taxis, but they are catching up. Owner-drivers and fleet operators are starting to see fresh changes. How much money they can make with the difference between cost of ownership after fuel and maintenance savings.
More and more taxi drivers and businesses, like New York’s yellow cabs. They are now turning to Model 3 because the economy makes a lot of sense.
Read Tesla Model X: World’s fastest SUV
Once, one of them made the jump to electricity. Above all, we knew more would follow this trend because the electric car economy was really shining with higher mileage applications like taxi services.
Tesla Model 3 yellow cab is setting the trend
One year after New York approved the Tesla Model 3 to enter its fleet of yellow cabs. The first one has hit the streets.
A Model 3 with medallion number 8P86 — the only electric taxicab in the city, according to public records — just finished its first full weekend of service, completing more than 100 trips over the two-day period. The electric vehicle is owned by Drive Sally, which operates a fleet of more than 1,000 cars that it leases out to cabbies and drivers for ride-hailing platforms in New York and Chicago.
The Model 3 first hit the road on October 30, and users on Twitter and electric-car blog Electrek spotted it soon after. Drive Sally pulled it for a few days to make some adjustments, and, as of Monday, it has spent four days on the road with two different drivers at the wheel.
The EV is still somewhat of a trial phase, Adriel Gonzalez, Drive Sally’s founder, and COO told. Each time a driver comes back from their shift, Gonzalez interviews them to see what feedback, if any, they can give on piloting the city’s first electric yellow cab.
The Bottom Line
Drive Sally plans to bring hundreds of Teslas to New York’s streets shortly, but for now, the company is still working out the kinks. Gonzalez suspects that the EVs may be better suited for for-hire “black cars” than yellow cabs, and he also said that the more-spacious Model Y would likely work better as a cab than the Model 3, but they’re still too expensive.
New York isn’t the first city where passengers can hail a battery-powered taxi. Madison-based Green Cab converted its entire fleet to Model 3s this year, and Columbus Yellow Cab in Ohio bought ten of them in 2019. Amsterdam has had Tesla taxis since at least 2014.
