How use taxi ford natural gas car The next time you hail a taxi, you could be jumping in to one that runs on compressed natural gas (CNG). Chicago and Los Angeles are now the two latest cities to roll out Ford Transit Connect Taxis fueled by CNG.
In Chicago today, Taxi Medallion Management will put 12 Ford Transit Connect Taxis powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) into service as part of an event celebrating the increased presence of CNG in Chicago. A CNG Ford Transit Connect Taxi will participate in the opening of a new Clean Energy CNG filling station and natural gas advocate T. Boone Pickens will speak at the event after arriving in a CNG Transit Connect Taxi.
The Chico Transit Connects feature a 2.0 liter I-4 engine that gets an estimated 21-26 mpg. It boasts a 30% improvement in fuel economy over traditional taxis, a 138 cubic feet cargo capacity, and 1,600 pound payload.
The Transit Connect Taxi was developed using market research we conducted with the taxi industry to better understand what customers wanted in a future vehicle, Gerald Koss, marketing manager at Ford Fleet Operations, said in a press release.
The more conversations we had, the more interest we saw in a taxi with the flexibility of offering a compressed natural gas version.For the average driver, logistics trump price, and the relative lack of CNG refueling stations in the United States has made the fuel a nonstarter. Honda has been producing the country's only CNG vehicle, the Civic GX, since 1998, but only to customers in California, Utah and, more recently, New York.
The result is a national fleet in the hundreds, and drivers and alt-fuel activists who have interpreted Honda's rejection of would-be buyers, based on their access to fueling stations, as a full-blown conspiracy to limit CNG adoption. With its new Transit Connect engine-prep packages, Ford is avoiding any such accusations of Machiavellian handicapping, by skipping the awkward step of foisting an unfamiliar infrastructure on private consumers, and instead marketing the vehicle directly to taxi companies and state and local authorities.
