⚡ Will Stored TLC Plates Be Reissued As EV-Only FHV Licenses?
Daily News OpEd calls for EV-only reissuance of stored TLC Plates. TLC leasing company leader also suggests 3 EV for 2 gas TLC Plate trade mechanism
In a July 19th New York Daily News opinion piece, ‘TLC drivers can pave NYC’s EV way to the future: Electrify the For-Hire-Vehicle fleet and the rest will follow’, Julie Tighe & Julie Samuels suggest the TLC could drive further EV adoption by reissuing stored FHV Licenses as EV-only TLC Plates. We assume that Tighe and Samuels are referring to unclaimed stored TLC Plates that remain after the August 31st deadline passes, as many previously stored TLC Plates have already been reclaimed.
Tighe, the president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, and Samuels, president & executive director of Tech:NYC, wrote:
“This August, a program will expire that has allowed FHV drivers to keep their licenses in storage during the pandemic to reduce their expenses. Last year, the TLC said there were nearly 5,000 of these licenses in storage. The TLC should convert any of these stored licenses they reissue as EV-only”
- NY Daily News OpEd by Julie Tighe & Julie Samuels (July 19, 2023)
Buggy, Fast Track Proposal
Yesterday, in a published response to the aforementioned Daily News opinion piece, Sam Jurkowicz, co-CEO of VGM, the owner of two large TLC leasing companies, agreed with the proposal to reissue (unclaimed) stored FHV Licenses as EV-only TLC Plates. In addition, he goes further and comes up with another idea promoting EV adoption, writing:
“Our solution is conversion over congestion. For fleets like ours, the city should offer three new EV licenses if you trade in two gasoline licenses. There would be 5,000 new EVs and it would take 3,000 gasoline cars off the road…If we want EVs to work, we need conversion because it will help us fight congestion, all without hurting existing drivers.”
- Buggy co-founder Sam Jurkowicz, published in NY Daily News (July 27, 2023)
Some Thoughts
We think Tighe & Samuels’ suggestion is easy to understand and seems very logical, if you don’t know the details. In fact, if they knew the details they would realize existing City and TLC policies, including the FHV License Pause (a/k/a TLC Plate Cap), align with many of their legitimate environmental justice concerns.
Before the pandemic there were too many FHVs on the road. Let’s repeat that, BEFORE the pandemic there were already too many TLC-plated vehicles on the road. This is why *NEW* TLC Plates were capped in August 2018; why else do people think the issuance of new FHV Licenses was paused? 🤔. Yes, there was also initially an EV exemption, but that was also removed due to Revel’s likely intention to build a large TLC-plated fleet, which increasingly seems to have been a correct concern.
“It is not sustainable to allow an unlimited number of new vehicles to the road in a city that is all too familiar with the choke of traffic congestion…What we will not allow is the opportunity for another corporation — venture capitalists or otherwise — to flood our streets with additional cars.”
“Why would the TLC license more vehicles when there are so many that are not in use right now…There is no shortage of licensed vehicles right now in New York City. The number of licensed vehicles outweighs the demands for rides by passengers. These are facts, and this is the math, and this is our reality.”
- Former TLC Chair Aloysee Heredia Jarmoszuk
In addition to the underlying reasons behind the TLC Plate Cap, there were other market dynamics, which were set to promote natural FHV attrition. Natural attrition simply refers to a dynamic where TLC-plated vehicle supply would decline in a healthy market-driven manner (i.e., driver switches industry or retires and hands in their TLC Plates). The return of natural attrition was set to be driven by the passage of the TLC Driver Minimum Pay Standard in late 2018.
The minimum pay standard forced Uber and Lyft (also Via & Juno at the time), companies that had significant trip market share, to pay drivers a healthy NYC wage tied to how busy drivers were kept (i.e., utilization rate). This new law was set to reduce the size of the FHV fleet and increase driver earnings because it forced high-volume app companies to operate in a more sustainable fashion.
The venture capital (VC) ethos of infinity cars, drivers and subsidies was being checked. For example, it caused Uber and Lyft to stop onboarding new NYC drivers, unless trip demand justified it. In fact, in order to meet the minimum pay standard, Uber and Lyft had to create a “planner”, which basically meant that vehicle/driver supply was way out of whack with underlying trip demand to support sustainable wages. Juno, which had a ~5% share in the NYC ridehailing market, couldn’t even survive the new regulations! Via initially navigated the new rules, but its reliance on NYC shared rides was totally disrupted by the pandemic.
This gets us to the origin of the FHV License (TLC Plate) Storage program. The TLC created this program because the pandemic would have caused an unusual one-off FHV supply decline. When the market eventually recovered, given the existence of the TLC Plate Cap, the politics around reissuing tens of thousands of FHV Licenses lost during the height of once in a century pandemic, would have caused chaos and become extremely politicized.
In other words, the idea of “reissuance” misses the point of letting the storage program expire on August 31st. The whole point of letting the storage program expiry is to allow natural FHV License attrition to resume, NOT to use it as an opportunity to “reissue” TLC Plates that haven’t been reclaimed for two or three years! It can already be argued that there isn’t enough trips for current TLC drivers to make a healthy middle class NYC wage (i.e., Uber NYC has a driver waitlist again). Having idle (& costly) EVs with drivers who can’t earn a living wage is not good for the environment, driver mental health or perceptions of how City politics functions.
In his full response published in the Daily News, we do think Mr. Jurkowicz of VGM makes a lot of strong points regarding the lack of charging infrastructure and the tough ground reality of operating an EV for-hire in NYC.
“But driving an EV for-hire is tough — the costs of ownership are higher, and recharging stations are hard to find. For an ordinary hack trying to earn a living by driving, EVs are still a tough sell.”
- Buggy co-founder Sam Jurkowicz, published in the NY Daily News
However, the suggestion to issue 3 EV-only TLC Plates for every 2 Gas TLC Plates handed in “for fleets like ours”, is counter to conversion over congestion (i.e., adding more vehicles 🤔) goals and will be an EXTREMELY tough sell in the TLC driver community. Probably the last thing NYC for-hire drivers who lease their vehicles want to hear about is a new mechanism that allows large fleets, like Buggy and Fast Track, to acquire more TLC Plates, instead of prioritizing *NEW* FHV Licenses for individual drivers.
Yellow Cabs
The yellow cab industry, which currently has thousands of inactive medallions and thousands of underutilized single shift-only taxis, will be flabbergasted by both proposals published in the Daily News.
Why intelligent people and industry observers don’t suggest the conversion of inactive medallions to EV-only medallions is well…well it doesn’t make any sense. Marblegate, a large fleet owner and lender, can also help facilitate (i.e., financing) the conversion of the NYC taxi fleet to electric vehicles.
When policymakers and advocates avoid taking into account obvious industry dynamics and proposing straightforward solutions that would promote City electrification goals, while helping the struggling taxi medallion industry (🐦🐦🥌) it either means they haven’t thought deeply enough about the industry or have conflicting incentives.
Speaking Out
It’s hard to publish opinion pieces like this because we aren’t making any powerful friends by writing this - City government, environmental advocates, TLC, Uber, Lyft, Revel, large fleets aren’t going to like a lot about the above writing.
However, it’s more painful to observe policy misstep after misstep that has plagued the City’s for-hire transportation industry, that has led to driver suicides, that has led to bankruptcies, that can be observed in the silent, but immense stresses of driver households that many politicians like to speak about.
To all of our critics we simple say this - make better policy suggestions and reflect on feedback. For example, address why yellow cab EV conversion initiatives aren’t being promoted, the reasons are not obvious at all 🤷. Force us to come up with better counterarguments, it will promote richer discussion and debate. In turn, TLC drivers and other industry participants will better understand why new rules or regulations are being passed. We are ultimately answerable to our readers.
As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below or by emailing us at info@automarketplace.com.
AutoMarketplace NYC covers the for-hire transportation industry and automotive news. Check out AutoMarketplace on YouTube ▶️
But about city sold franchised taxi madallion for the public and to the public collected billions of dollars from public on the other side some cruppt officials and and some cruppt politicians r working behind the doors with ride hailing’s companies breaking the environment check and traffic congestion check on the 100,000 plus ride hailing’s cars it’s shame on the system
This is not the way stop pushing this Ev none sense . Drivers to be able to choose what car they want to work with . No insurance wants to insure Tesla so why push ev