By: Mario Mancini

Brooklyn e-scooter sharing firm Revel won’t be able to use a city loophole to launch its all-electric cab service on the streets of downtown Manhattan after the Taxi and Limousine Commission voted Tuesday to remove an exemption for electric cars from its cap on new for-hire vehicle licenses, AM NY reported.

“We will not be repeating the same mistakes of the past. We already have a cap and a process in place to look at issuing new vehicle licenses holistically, based on the need of the market and the needs of our city,” said TLC Commissioner Aloysee Heredia Jarmoszuk at the June 22 public hearing.

“Why would the TLC license more vehicles when there are so many that are so many that are not in use right now,” she said. “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.”

The cap on new ride for hire licenses was introduced with Mayor de Blasio in 2018, after companies like Uber and Lyft flooded the ride-hailing market, threatening to displace yellow cab drivers and clog Manhattan’s streets, AM NY explained.

Many felt the move was political, and a favor to traditional medallion taxis, who have been struggling and have seen medallion prices crash, as app.-based alternatives such as Lyft and Uber expanded.

Revel Chief executive officer Frank Reig pleaded with the commission not to end the Electric Vehicle exemption. “Revel isn’t going to flood the streets with thousands of cars at once like other operators have in the past. In fact, we literally can’t do that. A for-hire electric fleet needs charging infrastructure and this city has none of that,” Reig said. “Our goal is to do a multi-year buildout of charging infrastructure along with our rideshare service and you won’t see any real growth in one without the other”, the CEo stated at a TLC hearing.

In February, Revel reached an agreement with NYC to build charging stations for electric cars’

Founded in Brooklyn in 2018, Revel now operates 5,000 electric mopeds across New York City, Miami, Washington and the San Francisco Bay area, as indicated in published reports. The company’s expansion into charging stations comes amid renewed efforts in the United States to move away from gasoline-powered cars, as was reported By WABC News in New York. In a news release, Revel CEO and co-founder Frank Reig said that “the charging facility will be the first in a network of car-charging hubs planned for New York City in an effort to promote the use of electric vehicles.”