Nissan has won the right to provide a new generation of taxis for New York after a court threw out an appeal by cab operators who opposed being forced to buy Nissan’s US$29,700 NV200 mininvan.
The Manhattan appeals court ruled that the NV200 meets the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s obligation “to produce a 21st-century taxicab consistent with the broad interests and perspectives that the agency is charged with protecting.”
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Nissan won the New York contract to supply 15,000 vehicles in 2011. It is valued at US$1bn over 10 years. The New York taxi fleet is the largest in the US.
Taxi fleet operators have twice tried to stop the deal. The first time they argued, successfully, that the decision to make them buy Nissan’s vehicle violated the administrative code because it didn’t allow them to buy hybrid vehicles.
The city amended its rules to allow cab operators to buy hybrids until Nissan develops a NV200 hybrid.
The operators sued again last summer, claiming that forcing them to buy from one manufacturer exceeded the authority’s charter. Cab drivers currently choose from 15 manufacturers.
But Justice David B. Saxe wrote in Tuesday’s ruling that the taxi commission “carried out its assigned mission with an exacting process lasting from 2007 to 2011, obtaining input from all conceivable interests and concerns, to ensure a final decision that would best satisfy taxi passengers, owners, and drivers, as well as the general public.”
