Candidates for hybrid vehicles

We hired a Prius and went on a drive around Wales fairly recently. Wales was stunning, and we'll be making a return trip. The Prius was mostly a not particularly remarkable family car, but there were a couple of area where it really excelled.

The first one was in the quiet of the morning when leaving a B&B. There is a button which tells the Prius to avoid using the internal combustion engine for as long as possible. In this 'stealth mode' we pulled away from B&Bs with just a crunch of gravel, if that.

The other situation where the Prius excelled was in heavy traffic in London. When stopped in traffic, i.e. most of the time (or so it seemed), the car used minimal energy and was pumping no fumes into the air. However we still got to enjoy the noise and fumes from the thousands of other vehicles around us.

Given this experience I'd say hybrid technology is great for:

Early morning or late evening movements in residential areas. In the UK the all electric milk float has been around for ages, and increasingly we are seeing grocery delivery vehicles using either all electric or hybrid vehicles. Great stuff, but we need to see much more of this.

The London cab. This is a great vehicle. Tight turning circle, loads of room inside and driven by someone who actually knows where they are going. But, boy, are they noisy and polluting! Most of their life will be spent stood still in traffic jams or waiting for a fare with the engine running (to keep the driver warm). Hybrid technology (or some kind of all-electric) technology would be perfect for cabs in London and other large cities.

Waste collection vehicles. The nosiest of them all, with their mighty compactors on the back and the amazing range of loud noises they make as they whir, wheeze and rattle down the streets. These vehicle clearly need heaps of power to run the hydraulics for compacting, tipping and all that, but do they really need to run the big diesel engine and compressors while racing (oh, yes) from one set of rubbish bins to another? I think not. With Hybrid technology batteries could be charged while the engine was working to drive the hydraulics, and the engine could be off for the sprints between bins. The engine could kick in for longer runs, but for most of the stop-start small street stuff, the vehicle could be much quieter.

Buses in London are noisy beasts too. TfL are already looking at using Hybrid technology for those, but it seems to be taking a long time to put into practice. I saw the first hybrid double decker at the Lord Mayors show a few years ago, but even now I hardly ever see one actually in service.

If we can get these kinds of vehicles to be less polluting in terms of noise and exhaust it would significantly improve the environment in our modern cities, and hopefully set an example for other city road users.