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More hybrids on the way for city fleet
Contract to bring in 300 more vehicles

By Gary Washburn
Tribune staff reporter
10:30 PM CDT, September 12, 2007

In a town where City Hall's roof is a garden and green is considered good, the city has signed an $8.7 million contract to buy as many as 300 Toyota hybrid vehicles that use electric power and plans to buy the first city police cars ever to run on alternative fuel.
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"The market has changed so much in the past five years that it has made [alternative fuel cars] much more economically viable," said city Environment Commissioner Suzanne Malec-McKenna, who owns a 2004 Prius. "Much more functional vehicles have come on the market."

Cities across the country are adding new-generation vehicles to their fleets, and government and corporate fleets represent "the real growth area for hybrids," said Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, who has studied the alternative fuel vehicle market. "Consumers are buying, but better than a quarter of all hybrids being sold are either for commercial or government use."

Results have not been uniform, Spinella said.

"If the Prius is used in urban Chicago for the most part on battery power [at low speeds] rather than gasoline power [at higher speeds], then it's a positive thing both ecologically and in terms of cost," he said. Use of the hybrid SUV, however, "is a different issue."

"It's not all that terribly efficient. It's an expensive vehicle to maintain. The city probably will end up having a higher cost than the vehicles they are replacing, and you do very little [reducing] the carbon footprint. . . . It makes a nice statement, but that's about all it does."
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