Kent News - Taxi firm goes green in drive to save the planet

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Friday, September 3 2010, 6:34

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Taxi firm goes green in drive to save the planet

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Keith Gorman and Richard Penny

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Britain's first eco-friendly taxi company is up and running in Sittingbourne using cars with electric engines to carry passengers around the town, Yourswale reports.

Let’s Go Green Cabs is already getting up to 1,000 call-outs a week with its environmentally-friendly vehicles proving a hit.

The company is even sponsoring the welfare of polar bears in the Arctic - as their home is at risk from global-warming melting the ice - and is looking to other transport companies to follow its lead.

Keith Gorman and Richard Penny are behind the scheme, which has been praised by Sittingbourne and Sheerness MP Derek Wyatt and has seen business enquiries come in from as far afield as Malta.

“Taxi firms are an area in which there has been no real concern for the environment taken on board,” said Mr Gorman.

“I happen to feel responsible business is important, so I’m thrilled at how this has taken off.

“Cutting greenhouse emissions is vital and we see that is so every day on the news in the form of melting polar ice-caps.”

The company uses hybrid vehicles which have two engines – one a normal petrol engine and the other electric.

From zero to 30mph the electric engine is used and above that speed the petrol engine kicks in. If necessary both engines can be used to power the cars at speeds of up to 105mph.

Mr Gorman said: “Most of our business is around town so we are travelling at speeds of under 30mph, so there are no harmful exhaust emissions at all.

“The lower speeds are also the ones at which more fuel is consumed so it is a very good money saver as well.

“Some people say ‘is the lead long enough’ when I say the cars are electric or ask if we will be travelling at the speed of a milk float but the response has been very positive on the whole.

“Not least, this is because the cars are quiet and clean – and we charge the same price as any other taxi company.”

The green cab company employs around 20 drivers, both full and part time.

It came about after school friends Mr Gorman and Mr Penny met up again following a 12-year stint on Wall Street for the former.

“I was a broker in New York, making insanely rich men slightly richer,” said Mr Gorman. “I see setting up a pioneering environmentally friendly business as something of a cleansing of the soul.”

POSTED: 03/12/2008 09:30:00

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