Like any self-respecting cabbie, Andrew Grant has a talent for small talk. But when the conversation turns to his prized 2004 Toyota Prius, things get a bit more animated.
Andrew Grant.
“Gave Cameron Diaz a lift once,” he says matter-of-factly, leading me toward the Vancouver curb where the curvaceous car is parked.
“Oh, yeah? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘This is nothing, I’ve got two.'”
“What — two hybrids?”
He pauses just long enough to keep things respectable: “Yeah.”
Fame, as Andy Warhol once so eloquently opined, is a universal phenomenon, and Grant boasts his own rather lofty claim to it, with oodles of dashing self-confidence. While Cameron Diaz might have made an environmental name for herself driving a hybrid and Trippin’ all over the planet, this Canadian cab operator has been carving out his own niche: he is the (self-proclaimed) world’s first hybrid-taxi driver.
The humble hybrid has come a long way since it was introduced in North America in 1999. Last year, sales of the gas-electric vehicles ... Read more
