Miles are irrelevant because inner-city cabs spend alot of time idling. Using gas without even moving. With a regular car, their mileage would be in the low teens at best, I assume. With a Prius, it'd be in the 30s at least.

But I don't think any manufacturer in their right mind are going to charge cab companies anywhere near what we payed, especially in the early days.

Let's see, you should average about 25 MPH times 16 hours a day (they usually run 2 shifts a day) so that would be around 400 miles a day , give or take, times 6 days = 2400 miles a week. I figure in 10 weeks taxi cab can easily do 25,000 miles. As far as difference between Hybrid and standard car, are you comparing fully loaded hybrid to strip down, manual tranny, no AC car ? Because I don't think it was that much if you add standard hybrid options to ICE version, like traction control etc. And I would say normal taxi cab is very lucky if it gets 15 MPG, in city traffic, I average 40 MPG driving into Manhattan everyday in my TCH, Prius would probably get more. Over 25000 miles they would save about 1000 gallons in 10 weeks at $3.29 , that's $3290. Of course as far as lawmakers are concerned , it's not the money saved but CO2 from not burning 1000 gallons that would really count. BTW they have hybrid and CNG buses in the city for years already and you can actually walk next to 4-5 buses without choking to death.

Well, Today I drove right next to all yellow TCH taxi cab in Manhattan. We were both sitting in not moving at all traffic, enjoying nice sunny afternoon with AC running full blast and engine taking a rest before next battery recharge. Seems like mayors plan is taking a shape. It would be wonderful if they made and publish some study with hard numbers of gas savings, maintenance costs and the general impressions of how those hybrids perform in this very hard duty as taxi cabs.

average NYC can goes about 10-15mph average. The average cab does around 100 miles/shift (cabbies need to work 6x 10hour shifts a week to make decent money). The cars go 3 years for company cabs and 5 for privately owned cabs; either way they'll pay off the hybrid premium, but not that quickly. most cabs at the end of their 5 year cycle will be a little under 300,000 miles (lots of traffic and waiting at airports, hotels...)

as far as the MPG, the Crown Vic will do about 10-15mpg as a cab. During summer with the A/C on full blast for nearly 4 months will only get 6-8mpg. I'd say a typical cab will go through 6,000 gallons, or nearly $20,000 per year. I have yet to get any good info on what the NYC hybrid taxis get other than "yes, it's gets better mileage" from the drivers.

If I had to bet, I would put my $20 on about 25-30 MPG.

This is based on my mileage I got when leaving a crowded parking lot after an airshow where we basicly had to sit for a while and wait for traffic to funnel out with the a/c running.

Now compair 25 MPG to the crown vic's 10 MPG. That would net a savings of $8,000 in fuel using your esitmates.

Sounds like the hybrid savings can be realised in less than one year, so a 3 - 5 year life expectancy would give them a much larger savings.

Now lets see how the batteries do in the high discharge/charge settings the cabs will put them in.

Tha manufacturers should be giving big discounts just for the data they could get from a fleet like the cabs. if the car survives as a cab, it will be fine as a normal commuting car.

I don't know about 25mpg, I drive into the city daily and at least half of my 30 mile drive is in Manhattan and Queens during rush hour, worst time ever and I almost always get 40 mpg or more except in Winter or when I really get stuck in one place for hour or so. There is no traffic like at the airshow in the city. One time it took me 8 hours to drive from the airshow in NJ to my house on Long Island, about 100 miles total, with 3.5 hours just to leave the base and another 3 on this hell on Earth called NJ turnpike. There is no way traffic is that bad in Manhattan, unless you happen to drive Cross Bronx Expwy and every cab in the city knows how to avoid worst of the traffic, so I would think they should get 30 mpg , especially that driving a cab one have plenty of time to learn best way to save gas = $money.

A quote from an article about Canada's first Hybrid cab.
"Even we didn't believe it. When we heard that Andrew Grant of Vancouver had driven a 2001 Prius as a Yellow Cab for twenty five months and put on 332,000 kilometres (almost 207,000 miles), we were very, very impressed. That's the lileage many of us would put on in fifteen years. But when he told us that it had withstood the rigours of being used as a taxi without any repairs to the hybrid system, or any major repairs beyond normal maintenance, we were intrigued. We build Toyotas to last, but this was special. We wanted it back. That's the only reason it was taken off the road."
Word has it the car went back to Japan for a thorough examination.

Yes and I believe the owner got brand new Prius for free. Come to think of it, the electric motors are brushless so the only wear part would be a bearing, most of electronics are solid state which should last very long and testing has proven that worn out batteries don't affect fuel economy that much as long as they can hold some minimum charge, so I'm not really that surprised the car lasted so long, if the parts had no factory defects and were run within specs, especially not being over heated, which should be easy in Canada . I'm also a little surprised by their statement since in NY, CA and some other states Toyota gives 150k warranty on parts of hybrid system, therefore they expect it to last long time, but I guess it was one of the first high mileage hybrids, hopefully there will be plenty more in the future.

I was comparing the MSRP of a TCH versus a non-hybrid Camry. That is what I compared when I considered my TCH decision. I think Pete4's number of 60K miles/year is easier for me to believe than your estimate of 125K /year. I think a cab would be hard pressed to average 25 mph for 16 hours a day. But I have to admit, I have never lived in NYC.

Even with your numbers, the hybrid upcost does not pay for itself in a few weeks. I define a few weeks as 2-4 weeks.

And yes, I know that cab companies get better pricing on their cars than little old me.