New York City has a law that by 2012, all of its taxis must be hybrids. In order to meet the demand, automakers today announced they will set aside 300 hybrids a month for the city’s fleet to make sure there are enough hybrid taxis to go around. Here’s a summary:

New city regulations require that any new cab coming into service after Oct. 1, 2008, achieve a fuel efficiency standard of 25 miles per gallon. The following year, that increases to 30 mpg. The standard yellow cab in use today, the Ford Crown Victoria, gets only about 14 mpg. But some hybrid models, which run on a combination of gasoline and electricity, achieve as much as 36.

These m.p.g. numbers just aren’t true. They might be the published numbers, but shouldn’t the numbers the cabs actually get be taken into account?

I actually rode in my first NYC hybrid taxi, a Toyota Highlander, a few days ago. This particular driver was the owner of the taxi, which means to non-New Yorkers that the cab was far cleaner and better maintained than a taxi which is leased out on a daily basis. This driver/owner knew his fuel usage to the penny. He said when he first took delivery of the cab, he was getting about 26 m.p.g. About a year later, this number had dropped to 18 m.p.g. He went on to say the battery is under warranty for 100,000 miles, but, even if he could put in a claim, there just aren’t any extra batteries out there. He’s also furious that he went out and bought a hybrid before the law kicked in. He didn’t quote me a figure, but he said he paid “much more” for the hybrid instead of a Ford Crown Victoria and there’s no way he’d ever make up the difference in price now that the Toyota’s gas mileage had decreased. This driver also said he would regularly get 18 m.p.g. on the Ford, not the 14 m.p.g. quoted by the A.P.

We’re seeing a lot more NYC vehicles as hybrids, too. I’d love to see some sort of third-party verification on how much gas is actually being saved by implementing the expensive hybrids over other options.