This is an image from yesterday’s NY Post. The article summary is, “This Could Be Your Ride in 2013”.  This is essentially a copy of a cab design put forward by Russell Robertson and his design group in Taxi design competitions from over 5 years ago.  On April 24, 2007 at our LVHRD Bi-Fold GRN we had Russell Robertson show his design for a new kind of taxi. He had already been working on this design for years and was aggressively looking for funding to build a working prototype and forward thinking people from the Taxi Commission to make it a realization.  He had both hybrid and electric versions and it had been designed in a purpose built manner. Here is a video we did with Russell talking about his design.  You can see the similarities of his model in the video to the designs trumpeted in the Post yesterday. This kind of stuff absolutely infuriates me. So 3 years after we tried to promote Russell’s design to a wider audience, and almost 8 years after he introduced the design, we are no closer to having a cab design that is proper for its task and utilizing the electric car technology at hand. Now we apparently have to wait another 3 years to “maybe” see a new design. This is the same song and dance with so much of our government-lead innovation. All talk and little action. It reminds me of the current ocean environmental crisis. Everyone is accussing the President of having a blasé attitude but beyond stomping his feet or taking trips to the Gulf, this is his our chance to make a quantum leap forward with environment laws. We have the emotional and political capital to do so. Lets not take baby steps but make a bold move that we know is the right answer so in another five years we won’t be in the same position we are in today.

This is an image from yesterday’s NY Post. The article summary is, “This Could Be Your Ride in 2013”. 

This is essentially a copy of a cab design put forward by Russell Robertson and his design group in Taxi design competitions from over 5 years ago. 

On April 24, 2007 at our LVHRD Bi-Fold GRN we had Russell Robertson show his design for a new kind of taxi. He had already been working on this design for years and was aggressively looking for funding to build a working prototype and forward thinking people from the Taxi Commission to make it a realization.  He had both hybrid and electric versions and it had been designed in a purpose built manner.

Here is a video we did with Russell talking about his design.  You can see the similarities of his model in the video to the designs trumpeted in the Post yesterday.

This kind of stuff absolutely infuriates me. So 3 years after we tried to promote Russell’s design to a wider audience, and almost 8 years after he introduced the design, we are no closer to having a cab design that is proper for its task and utilizing the electric car technology at hand. Now we apparently have to wait another 3 years to “maybe” see a new design. This is the same song and dance with so much of our government-lead innovation. All talk and little action.

It reminds me of the current ocean environmental crisis. Everyone is accussing the President of having a blasé attitude but beyond stomping his feet or taking trips to the Gulf, this is his our chance to make a quantum leap forward with environment laws. We have the emotional and political capital to do so. Lets not take baby steps but make a bold move that we know is the right answer so in another five years we won’t be in the same position we are in today.