[Tanada]

http://translate.google.com/translate?a ... s-del.html

Miami-Dade County bought six years ago hundreds of hybrid cars, police cars and vans - with zero miles! - In 2006, but 170 of them have never been used. Cost to taxpayers: $ 4 million.

Now the case has become a scandalous political Pandora's box.

The president of the Miami Dade County Commission, Joe Martinez,-who is running for county mayor, announced Thursday the creation of a committee of investigation of mismanagement and corruption, following revelations that the vehicles remained parked in a building parking at 2100 41st Street Northwest, in the Earlington Heights for six years.

Martinez said the committee shall consist of five commissioners to review all documentation related to the case.

"It's outrageous," said Martinez. "These new vehicles were bought out of control package and were stationed in a building for years. This is not the first time it happens. So you have to investigate this case and determine exactly what happened so it does not happen again. "

http://www.autominded.com/1937_miamis-a ... -car-stash

The Director of Corporate Services in Miami-Dade, Lester Sola, told El Nuevo Herald that the vehicles going into service are still under warranty. That’s probably not a complete figure at least with the forgotten Priuses. They all have sat out their entire factory-backed 3 year/36,000 mile basic warranty, and the 2006-2007 cars are coming to the end of their 5 year/60,000 mile drivetrain warranty.

It is likely that five years of zero use and south Florida heat has had some negative effects on the hybrid battery drivetrain. Lucky for Miami-Dade, Toyota covers the hybrid components for 8 years/80,000 miles.

Today there are still some unwrapped 2007 Priuses at a Miami-Dade storage garage, as well as multiple other vehicles from this cache that have waited over half a decade to go into municipal service. The reason why this happened is still unclear. Carlos Alvarez was the mayor of Miami-Dade County during the period the vehicles were purchased. He was removed from office in a March 2011 recall election because voters felt, among other reasons, that he had been behind multiple acts of misappropriation of funds.

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/04/25/hund ... i-that-we/

Have you ever bought a brand new cars only to forget where you put it? How about 300 of them? Probably not – unless you're Miami-Dade County, which was recently reunited with 298 vehicles it bought brand new between 2006 and 2007.

The county "discovered" this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a Spanish-language newspaper there (see the source for more images). Most of the misplaced motorcade is made up of Toyota Prius hybrids whose warranties either expired with very few miles on the odo or will very soon.

Looking to save some face, the county has rushed at least 123 of the hybrids into service. The Toyota warranty covered the hybrid bits for eight years or 100,000 miles, but we're not sure if that covers cars parked for five of those eight. We're also not sure what that much time in Miami heat and humidity does to an unused hybrid powertrain, but it can't be good.

The county, as you probably guessed, is looking into how it lost so many cars. The leading theory is that they might be part of Carlos Alvarez's time as mayor. He was the mayor during the period the Toyotas were purchased, but a 2011 recall election successfully removed him from office. Apparently the voters "felt, among other reasons, that he had been behind multiple acts of misappropriation of funds."

Now I know Florida is not the same as Michigan or Ohio, but if Detroit or Cleveland had a fleet of brand new vehicles sitting in a parking structure somewhere they would have been stolen, sold, or taken out for a night on the town by the people who work for the city. How do 300 vehicles in a city maintained facility go missing? Why does it take months of reporting on the subject before the city gets its act in gear? Just how many new cars has the city bought in the 5 years that these were sitting in storage?

I despise waste and if there was ever a demonstration of waste this is it.

[Sixstrings]

I read up on this a bit.

Sounds like they bought the cars in bulk at the tail-end of boom times (and high end properties in Miami never did crash). Then the next year they decided to reduce the vehicle fleet. Cost cutting maybe? Fewer gov employees granted a county car? Whatever reason, they then had excess in the fleet (7300 total vehicles in fleet) and stored them.

They go through X number of vehicles per month and have whittled the excess inventory down from 800 to 170ish. I don't really see an outrage here, the cars aren't going anywhere they'll work their way through the inventory.

Apparently this is a mayoral election scandal. Anyhow.. Miami has bigger problems than this. And it's Miami.. shady things go on down there, who knows. Did I mention it's Miami?

I'm surprised this is a national story. Probably the Prius angle. Maybe a right-wing meme tsunami building here about wasteful green tech.

[Tanada]

Sure as far as it goes, however if you are extending out the time you are keeping each vehicle in service is it not eminently more sensible to get all the cars under warranties into service and use the storage lot for the ones which are close to end of life? Cycling through the older stock shouldn't be too challenging when you have that big of a total fleet. They might have actually come out ahead by selling off a set of mid age cars to the poor (cars with 80,000 miles of a 200,000 mile life is what I am referring too). By disposing of the mid age cars and putting the newer and more fuel efficient cars in service early they would have garnered benefits from decreased fuel and maintenance costs and not had the storage costs at all. Not to mention how it would have helped those hurt worst by the recession.