MY Prius Taxi's

I recently purchased two 2008 Prius to replace my Civic and Accord taxi's.
My fuel cost in 2007 was $35,000. With the recent spike in fuel prices up to $1.35 a litre I would have spent over $40,000 had i not bought the new cars. Looking forward to saving close to $20,000 this year on fuel.
Getting 50-55 mpg, and now that my drivers know I will check to see how many litres per 100 km they are using they are around the same.
Having invested $59,000 it is great to be able to check and see if the drivers are treating my cars right. I took 1 shift where I drove the car hard to see how much it would use per 100 km and I was at 6.2 litres instead of the 5.0 to 5.3 litres that I usually use.

The cars have just passed 20,000 km after 2 months. I will do reports ever once in a while to show how they are holding up under taxi conditions.
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I had the misfortune of one of my drivers leaving the car unattended and unlocked for 5 min and some prankster stole both the headrests from the car. I was shocked when Toyota quoted me around $450 a headrest to replace. I checked local wreckers with no luck. I went to car-part.com
and found several carseats that matched but no one that I have talked to so far will ship to Ontario. It is too bad because the seats were as cheap as $150 each. If anyone has a suggestion i would appreciate the advice.
Thanks

 

Thanks for the help. Will check those links.

 

Bill--- I purchased the base model for both cars. Being taxi's i don't worry about any extra's. The cars average about 10,000 km a month.
The meter, GPS unit and printer had to be mounted on a bracket that is bolted to the floor in front of the radio. Makes things a lot closer to me than I like. Toyota advised the mechanics to never go near the dash when mounting the meter etc. Makes it better when i go to sell the car someday.
The mechanics did a nice job designing a bracket that would be stable.
As for the passengers I would say that 50% of them have questions.
They ask about where I plug the car in and are quite surprised to find out that there is no plug in. A couple have asked about what kind of gas we use.
Most are concerned about the lack of power when the car accelerates. Once again they are surprised to find out that there is plenty of power.
They are amazed at how much leg room there is in both the back seat and the front.
There are 7 Prius on the 70 car fleet and would be more if there were more available.The owner of the company want's 7 more but is having a hard time finding them.
When I first went to the local Toyota dealer i explained to them that there are 190 taxi's in the city and that in 4 years we are not exempt from the idling bylaw. I suggested that it would be smart for them to promote a good price to the 3 cab companies and have their name on the back of 100+ taxi's in a few years. I pointed out to them that people being curious would be asking about the Prius and it would be good advertising for us to be saying that we bought them here in town instead of out of town.
They wouldn't budge much so I ended up buying them out of town for $1,100 cheaper per car for a $2200 savings. Not too smart on their part.
The salesman heard I had bought 2 out of town and called me up and had the nerve to ask why I didn't come back to see if he would match the price. He now says that when I put a couple more taxi's on in the next year or so to come talk to him. I think he realizes that there are 7 Prius on the fleet and not one came from the local dealer and they are missing out on some good free advertising. Called learning the hard way.

 

Husker--- I don't get rid of the cars at a certain mileage. I keep an eye on how much the cost is for maintenance each month and go from there.
My Honda cabs were still pretty good at 350-400,000 km so I expect to get much more out of the Prius. My drivers are driving the Prius much easier than the Honda's simply because they know I can check the amount of gas burned per 100,000 km and that the numbers don't lie. It's great, in the past they could deny that they were driving to hard or fast, now they can't.
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I am still having a hard time finding a couple of front seats for one of the cars.Found a couple of American wreckers that have them but they won't ship to Canada. All I need them for is the headrests ( I had two headrests disappear somehow last weekend, still getting no good answers out of the 2 drivers) Toyota wants around $450 each for a headrest. Made me sick to hear that.