[salem]

Regarding the taxis, just about every taxi in Australia runs on LNG these days. It's widely available, and aside from the benefits on somewhat cleaner emissions, you can easily make the money back on the conversion for the number miles they rack up. I'm surprised this is not subsidized in the USA, especially now that the reserves of gas have been revised up so much.

[tjmc]

You're off by a carbon atom. The taxis here run on LPG not LNG. In other words - propane rather than methane. Australia still produces more LNG than pretty much anywhere, but it's all shipped off to China, Korea and Japan.

[riffraff]

FWIW, taxis in italy have massively migrated to hybrid cars (noticeably, prius)