In a market overrun by taxis and limos, Seth Riney’s livery business is taking the road less traveled.As gas prices continue to soar, Riney’s 3-year-old enterprise, PlanetTran LLC, is carving out a niche for itself in the public ground transportation market by offering the nation’s first car service using an all-hybrid fleet of vehicles.
Hybrids function on dual sources of mechanical energy — an electric motor and gas engine — that enable the vehicles to get about 48 miles per gallon on the road, compared with around 16 mpg for the typical taxi.
Sensing that the business-travel community was ripe for a fuel-efficient alternative, Riney has grown his 32-member, Cambridge-based operation to 14 company-owned hybrids (12 Toyota Priuses and two Lexuses), with plans to add 10 more in Boston by years’ end.
Photo by ~C4Chaos.
James D. Brausch » Carnival Of Marketing on June 12th, 2006 at 6:11 am
[...] Dane Carlson highlights how one company is dealing with the gas crunch in his latest post on Road Wage. [...]
Ben Yoskovitz on June 12th, 2006 at 7:33 am
I think it’s a great idea. Wouldn’t surprise me if more cab companies go in this direction.
In fact, the Green Party in Canada proposed switching all cabs to hybrids, saying it would make the cab companies more money even if the cards are initially more expensive. I never looked at the math of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s true.
danakeith on June 8th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
congratulations!
you’ve done a good job there..
keep up the good work.