Over the weekend, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz became the latest to give support to Turkish Taxi of Tomorrow candidates Karsan, saying “I hope that city officials will seriously consider taking a ride with Karsan—we owe it to everyone in the city that seeks gainful employment,” he said at an event yesterday morning. But the Times reports that the TLC has rejected Karsan's design because a "review raised concerns about whether the Turkish company, untested in the American market, could reliably execute the high-concept product it had designed." However, the Ford and Nissan designs aren't faring much better.
Karsan had previously said that if they won, they would build the taxis in Brooklyn, and they claimed to be the only candidate whose entire fleet would be wheelchair accessible. Karsan adviser Jay Kriegel said yesterday, “We’ll be bringing the engines from [Chrysler] Michigan, the chassis from Turkey and the rest of the parts would be heavily American,” and said 300 jobs would be created initially. Jan Nahum, the executive director of Karsan, said the company is "unaware of any such report, and the concerns reportedly raised in it have never been expressed to us."
Neither of the remaining designs would be made in the US, and officials say the Ford design is "uninspired." The Nissan submission looks a little roomier, but doesn't have the wheelchair accessibility, the glass roof or the jump seat that made Karsan the people's choice. But Bloomberg said on Friday, “You’ve got to look at how much experience companies have had in building cars."
