A neon green bar chart lit up the small, in-dashboard LCD screen and quickly disappeared as Jake Settell punched a button to bring up a new set of gauges.

He went quiet momentarily as he scanned the calculations and his car lightly hummed down a downtown Lincoln street.

Even with a few months under his belt driving his new hybrid Toyota Prius taxi cab — among the first to cruise Lincoln streets — he wasn’t about to play the expert in explaining the technology that helps him get around town every day.

“I don’t know how to interpret this,” he said with a laugh as he gestured toward the data. “… I just drive the thing.”

What Settell does know is his new vehicle is making people happy these days — including his bosses, who are seeing considerable saving at the pump, and his customers who are enjoying the roomier, quieter ride.

The electric-gas cab is one of four, and soon to be one of six navigating around town, said Kirby Young, a co-owner of Servant Cab Co., which owns Capital Cab and Yellow Cab.

The recent purchases came after a lot of research, he said. Trading up older cabs — ones that require more maintenance — for the new, fuel-efficient hybrids just made sense from an economic standpoint, said Young, who declined to estimate how much the company expects to save.

The new cabs were first dispatched late last year, replacing and well-outperforming some older-model Ford Crown Victorias and Chevrolet Caprice Classics.

The older vehicles averaged 10 to 20 mpg — some logging 100,000 miles a year, he said. The new additions to the 35-car fleet are getting closer to 40 mpg.

“We’re real happy,” Young said.

For Settell, who took to driving cabs more than three years ago to fit around his studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, it has meant an average fill-up at the end of his shift comes to about $6, versus the $15 to $20 that went into the tank before he swapped cars.

Taxi driving is a great application for hybrids because they get their best fuel economy in stop-and-go traffic, said Jennifer Watts, a spokeswoman with the Electric Drive Transportation Association based in Washington D.C. Low speeds engage the electric motor, saving the gas for the more open roads.

Hybrids also keep emissions down, she added.

“You can leave less of a footprint on the environment by using a hybrid taxi cab,” she said.

The hybrid-cab trend has picked up elsewhere, including big cities like New York, Watts said. Besides the commercial fleet, hybrids also are picking up speed in public transit, with many agencies across the country going to hybrid buses and trolleys.

The trend is following the rising popularity of hybrid passenger vehicles, whose sales have skyrocketed in recent years, she said.

In 2000, consumers purchased about 9,300 hybrid passenger vehicles nationally, and that figure climbed to more than 246,000 last year, according to data compiled by the association. By 2011, passenger hybrids are expected to capture 3 percent of the U.S. market — with ownership cost playing a major role in holding the figures low. A new car buyer can expect to spend about $3,000 more initially than a comparable gas-powered vehicle.

Good gas mileage has been only part of the story, Settell said.

He’s had passengers in awe of his new cab’s features — for example, a backup camera that shows him a reverse view in his in-dashboard LCD screen.

Several passengers had doubts on first glance about the cab’s leg room or trunk space, he said. Once inside the four-passenger capacity cab however, their opinions changed.

“It’s deceptively roomy,” said Settell, who boasted a perfect record of fitting luggage into the trunk.

Young, meanwhile, has no doubts in his business move, and in fact is hoping to add more hybrids to the fleet in time.

“I’d like to do it all tomorrow, but financially, you just can’t go spend half a million dollars,” he said.

Reach Jean Ortiz at 473-7107 or jortiz@journalstar.com

On the Web:

Electric Drive Transportation Association, http://www.electricdrive.org