A taxi, right out of the Flintstones
I’m being bombarded with press releases — most of them greenwashing — because of Earth Day, but one announcement caught my eye. A company called EcoCab unveiled today that this summer it will launch a pedal-powered taxi service in Toronto, with plans next year to expand into other major urban centres across Canada. The launch in Toronto will involve 28 EcoCab “bikes” — which are three-wheeled bicycles with a passenger cabin that also features battery-assist, allowing the vehicle to reach speeds of 12 km/h (8 miles/hr) without having to pedal. “Able to easily navigate through congested city streets, the EcoCab provides convenient door to door service between office buildings, transit stations, shopping areas, restaurants, and entertainment attractions,” the company said.
Now here’s the kicker, and conventional cabbies won’t like it one bit: the service is free. That’s right, anybody can hop into one of the EcoCabs and get a free ride. The service is funded by do-good corporate sponsors.
Simple. Effective. My only question is if you can drive one of these things in downtown Toronto, why can’t you drive a ZENN?
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
May 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Especially considering that small cars can be engineered to be quite safe.
http://webtidbit.blogspot.com/2008/05/car-crash.html
December 15th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
This is nothing but 21 century version of Indian or Chinese Riksha.
Gatwick Airport Taxi London
and
Transfer Gatwick ->Heathrow