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 first to report that the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), which oversees the city’s fleet of yellow cabs, has 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.
Once one of them made the jump to electric, we knew that more would follow because the economics of electric cars really shine with higher mileage applications like taxi services.
Savas Tsitiridis, president of United Taxi Management NY, saw the opportunity and announced that his company started adding four more Tesla Model 3 electric cars to its fleet (via LinkedIn):
They even installed their own Chargepoint charging station in their lot to charge the new electric cars.
As we previously reported, Tesla’s vehicles are becoming particularly popular with taxis in Europe, including in markets like the Netherlands, where a fleet of over 100 Tesla vehicles has been operating as taxis out of the Amsterdam airport since back in 2014.
In North America, electric vehicles haven’t been as popular for use as taxis, but it is catching up.
Owner-drivers and fleet operators are starting to see how much more money they can make with the difference in cost of ownership after fuel and maintenance savings.
We previously covered the very first Tesla taxi driver in North America when his Model S hit 100,000 miles back in 2017.
More taxi drivers and companies are now, like New York’s yellow cabs, looking at Model 3 because the economics make a lot of sense.
Last year, we reported on Columbus Yellow Cab announcing that it bought 10 Tesla Model 3 vehicles in order to accelerate the electrification of its fleet of 170 taxis.
We also heard of a fleet of 40 Tesla Model 3s in Madison, Wisconsin, becoming the first all-electric taxi service in the US.
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