On a sprawling industrial park just outside of Coventry, a Chinese company you’ve never heard of is reinventing our cities’ broken transport systems. Its innovation of choice? The humble black cab.
Even if you’re not on first name terms with Geely, a car manufacturer headquartered in Hangzhou, China, there’s a good chance you’ve come in contact with the company in one form or another. In 2010 the firm – which until then had modest success selling inexpensive cars to the Chinese market – bought Volvo for £1.4 billion. Then, in 2017, it snapped up the British sports car manufacturer Lotus and a year later surprised the automotive world by stealthily acquiring a 9.7 per cent stake in Daimler, the manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz.
But five years ago Geely made an even stranger move. It bought failing taxi manufacturer, London Taxis International, that had limped into administration after nearly 50 years producing the ubiquitous London black cab. When Geely paid £11.4 million for the firm it was still shipping in parts from China and cobbling them together in a Coventry factory. “The roof lifted off the factory in the wind and it rained on the inside as well as the outside,” says Steve Fitter, a manufacturing manager who has been with London Taxis International for 18 years.
But now this decidedly British firm – rebranded as the London Electric Vehicle Company – is at the centre of Geely’s plans to transform urban transport. An antidote to gig-economy firms that run up against regulators while their drivers barely eek out a living, LEVC is betting that black cabs are here to stay if only they can drag themselves into the 21st century.
That’s where LEVC’s electric taxi, the TX, comes in. Launched in January this year, the TX is the only London taxi that meets London’s new clean air regulations requiring newly-licensed taxis to be able to drive for 30 miles without releasing a single puff of pollution.
Across Europe there are more than 200 low emission zones that levy charges on heavily-polluting vehicles or ban them from certain areas altogether. Last week Hamburg became the first German city to ban most diesel cars in an attempt to improve air quality. And as cities clamour to bring in in tougher laws to ensure cleaner city air, LEVC is readying itself for regulations that it hopes will create new demand for electric taxis and see the black cab go truly international.
But to get there, LEVC will have to contend with a sea of Toyota Priuses with stickers in their back windows. In London, Uber drivers outnumber black cabs two-to-one, although the ride-hailing company is locked in a battle with Transport for London (TfL) over the authority’s refusal to grant it a new license while also fighting off legal claims from drivers who argue that they are employed by the firm and should receive employment benefits that reflect that status.
But LEVC CEO Chris Gubbey thinks that his fleet of slick, near-silent taxis fitted with onboard Wi-Fi and USB chargers can entice passengers. “The fundamentals of our business are based around a professional driver and a superb product that contributes towards the clean air in the cities,” he says. For Gubbey, black cabs aren’t just here to stay, they’re the unassuming centrepiece of Geely’s plan to pioneer cleaner, greener transport in cities.
Five miles away from its leaky predecessor, LEVC now occupies a 38,000 square metre factory in Ansty, Warwickshire – the first in the UK to be solely dedicated to electric vehicles. After its takeover, Geely pumped £325 million into LEVC, most of that earmarked for the development of the TX, with £90 million going towards the new factory and offices.
In the foyer of those offices sits a old Austin FX4 – the first black cab produced by one of LEVC’s predecessor companies, and the design inspiration behind the new TX. Take a walk around London and the firm’s legacy is immediately apparent. Some 80 per cent of London’s 22,000 hackney carriages – the kind that’s licensed to pick up members of public who haven’t booked in advance – are made by former versions of LEVC.
But the very existence of this new factory is a testament to Geely’s faith in the future of the black cab. The entire structure sprang up in just 60 weeks – including a short delay after construction workers unearthed a rare species of protected newt – opening its doors in March 2017. When it gets up to full speed, the factory will be capable of producing one TX every 14 minutes.
Inside the factory right now, things are eerily quiet. Aluminium panels forged in Wales are neatly laid out on grids, ready to be checked by a computer vision system. Unlike early models, which all had steel frames, the TX is built out of lightweight aluminium to compensate for the weight of its bulky lithium-ion battery, but at 2.2 tonnes the entire vehicle still comes in at 250 kilograms heavier than the last model.
“In the beginning it was desperately trying to be a van,” says David Ancona, who led the team that designed the TX. Part of that is down to the strict regulations that determine the size and shape of the vehicle. In London, all hackney carriages must comply with the Conditions of Fitness, a set of 23 detailed requirements first published in 1906 when there were just 100 motorised taxis in London, that cover everything from the colour of floor coverings to the right type of door lock to use.
Most curiously, taxis must have a tight, 25-foot, turning circle, which originated in them needing to navigate the tiny roundabout outside the Savoy Hotel. And the Conditions of Fitness determine every other aspect of the vehicle design too, from the inner height of the passenger compartment (at least 1.3 metres) to the distance between opposite-facing seats (42.5 centimetres). Doorways must be at least 75cm wide, to allow plenty of space for a wheelchair, and windows cannot be tinted more than 25 per cent.
On January 1, 2018, TfL added a major item to the Conditions of Fitness. As well as all the above requirements, all new black cabs must be able to drive for 30 miles without releasing any exhaust emissions at all. All engines – if they are present at all – must be petrol, and if that engine is being used, for instance, to provide a battery with extra juice, it must release no more than 50 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre of travel, less than half the amount released by the average new car sold in Europe.
In his initial designs for the TX, Ancona toyed with a deliberately futuristic feel. Early designs looked like a British take on the cars in I Robot – all smooth lines and gleaming glass. At the rear a panoramic sunroof seamless spilled out of the rear passenger windows, wrapping the entire passenger compartment in a glass cocoon.
The temptation was to go with a design that was deliberately fresh and contemporary, says Ancona, but with the average taxi having a working life of between 15 to 20 years, what seems modern in 2018 might feel fusty by 2030. “It’s only going to stay that way for five years before it looks old and a bit silly.”
The classic black cab has a cute, welcoming design, Ancona says. Its rounded roof and distinctive shoulder haunch give it a “rather cute hedgehoggy kind of look”. The kind of car that you’d be glad to see motoring towards you on a rainy day to safely pick you up. The TX, however, is ever so slightly bigger, a little bulkier, and crucially, doesn’t have the heavily-polluting 2.5 litre diesel engine at its core. The new design needed to communicate this departure from the past, without straying too far away from the classic London taxi look.
“It was very obvious from the beginning that we had to pull some kind of trick with this so it actually looked like a London cab but at the same time didn't,” Ancona says. “You’re kind of dealing with the crown jewels, aren’t you? It’s a vehicle that everyone’s going to have an opinion on.”
Soon, Ancona and is team opted to drop the avant garde approach for something a little more traditional. “We had to try and tap into that timelessness,” he says. “There’s something quite comforting with the London taxi, so we couldn’t really screw around with that. We had to capture that same feeling.” Ancona’s team looked back to the Austin FX4, a black cab first produced in 1958, to work out the design cues that give a London taxi its distinctive look.
They started by using design tricks to visually lower and stretch the TX. A curving indentation that runs along the bottom of the doors captures a puddle of light, helping to trick the eye into lowering the vehicle. The chrome trim framing the windows introduces another long horizontal line, distracting from the height of the car. The familiar rounded roof of the TX4 is gone, replaced by a much flatter profile more reminiscent of older taxis, but the distinctive humped bonnet and bumpy rear are still there. The result is car that is instantly recognisable as a black cab but also feels less workmanlike, and a touch more luxurious.
This modest injection of luxury is a deliberate move, says Gubbey. Black cabs are a premium product, and he’s determined to produce vehicles that passengers feel are worth paying a little extra for. “I think there's still a very strong place for it,” he says.
Despite his confidence in market demand for premium rides, Gubbey is well aware that the taxi market is squeezed like never before, particularly with Uber offering two premium tiers in London on top of uberX and UberXL. “You’ve got to strive to stay relevant,” he says, adding that he’s cut a deal with his Uber-loving children. “If they can prove to me what the [price] difference is, I’ll cover that difference but they’ll take a black cab.”
Besides, Gubbey says, his taxis are hardly anti-ride-hailing, or even ride-sharing. There are already a handful of apps – such as Gett and myTaxi – that let Londoners summon black cabs via their smartphones. But there’s still an underlying frustration – echoed by several people at LEVC – that ride-hailing apps are only able to undercut the competition thanks to a constant slurry of venture capital cash.
“If you look at the companies that are running the major competition, they are losing billions. On a level playing field, if they were a company that was in a normal competitive mode, I don't think the price difference would be that different,” Gubbey says. Uber remains tight-lipped on ride subsidies, but a 2015 analysis found that its customers were only paying 41 per cent of the cost of their journeys. Last year, Uber lost $4.5 billion dollars (£3.4bn), 61 per cent more than in 2016.
In a way, LEVC is the mirror image of Uber. The ride-hailing firm is fiercely resistant to regulation – for years it lobbied local and national governments to be recognised as a technology firm, not a transport company. Its refusal to meet the minimum requirements demanded of other taxi firms has led to outright bans in Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary as well as suspensions in Finland, France, Spain and the Netherlands. The firm has a similarly stubborn stance when it comes to its workers' rights, and only just agreed to give drivers in Europe sickness and injury payments – benefits that critics say still fall well below the level it should provide under long-established employment law.
For LEVC, Uber's behaviour provides a framework for how it might succeed. London's clean air targets aren't just sorely needed for a city where pollution levels regularly breach legal limits – they might also force the taxi industry to modernise. And where Uber would rather see itself as nothing more than a platform, LEVC is firmly committed to the idea that its products will only succeed when they're paired with a professional, fully employed driver.
Read more: Hey Tesla, how hard can it be to actually make a car?
Step inside the new TX and it’s clear where LEVC thinks it can set itself apart from Uber. Within the passenger compartment, a huge sunroof floods the rear with light while onboard Wi-Fi and USB charging plugs make the TX feel like a space where you might be able to shut out the city and get a little work done in London’s gridlocked traffic.
Inside, the seat arrangement has been tweaked to fit an extra passenger, up to six people in total. The centre seat in the back is also slightly set back so that three people can sit side by side without their shoulders knocking into each other.
But to really put the seats through their paces, LEVC had to break out the robotic buttocks: a plastic replica of a human rear-end coated in a little fabric, attached to mechanical arm, and squished into a car seat over and over again. The curious system lets engineers replicate years of people getting in and out of the back seats of a black cab into a few weeks of testing. If the seats hold up to 200,000 butt twists, and the rear doors are still hanging on after being open and shut the same number of times, the design is good to go.
For LEVC, butts on seats is everything. In purely functional terms – if you’re only interested in getting from A to B – black cabs don’t offer many advantages over Ubers. But Gubbey is convinced that the more passengers try his new taxi, the more people will be persuaded that it’s worth paying a little extra for a superior experience.
A lot of this comes down to the guts of the TX. Its 400 volt lithium-ion battery are two of the last parts that are fitted onto the vehicle before it rolls off the production line and enters a testing phase. In total, a single TX will take about ten days to pass through the factory until it is ready for the streets.
Running on battery-only, it has an on-paper range of just over 80 miles, although around the streets of London it tends to achieve closer to 65. A petrol engine unconnected to the wheels can charge up the battery while the taxi is on the go, giving it a total range of 377 miles. Without the bone-rattling rumble of a diesel engine onboard, the hope is that passengers end their journeys feeling refreshed rather than frazzled. And what’s good for a comfortable ride is even better for the environment.
Cabbies stand to gain even more than passengers from the switch to electric. “The first thing you notice is there’s no noise,” says Peter Powell, a taxi driver for 20 years and one of the first test drivers of the TX. “You haven’t got that noisy diesel engine picking away at your head for ten hours a day.” In a study that LEVC commissioned to test the health benefits of electric taxis, the company found that cabbies were more focussed and calmer when they’d been driving the electric TX rather than the TX4, with its 2.5 litre diesel engine.
But electric taxis bring with them their own unique frustrations. “Even over the last couple of weeks, it’s been getting more difficult to get to a rapid charging point because there are more taxi drivers using them,” Powell says. There are now 100 rapid charging points across london, 51 set side specifically for taxis, but Powell says there just aren’t enough in central London, where he picks up most of his passengers. When he does find a rapid charging point – his favourite is a spot just by London Bridge – there’s often a normal car parked in the space instead.
There are now just over 100 of LEVC’s electric taxis on London’s streets, but for Fitter, this is only the preamble to Geely’s plans. “They see this as a step into Europe and a step into the rest of the world,” he says. “They think big numbers, they think world markets, whereas before before we were only used to thinking very narrow,” Fitter says. Ultimately, the company intends to make itself the go-to automotive brand for electric taxis, and its international plans are already starting to bear some modest fruit. Amsterdam has already ordered 225 taxis, with another order in Norway on the cards.
But LEVC’s road to European expansion is about to become more crowded. This summer, Nissan will release the Dynamo – a fully electric taxi with a zero emission range more than double that of the TX. Late last year, LEVC lost a trademark battle that had delayed one of its oldest rivals, Metrocab, from bringing its own zero emission taxis to London for the past three years. Now the tussle over trademarking the iconic black cab is over, Metrocab is due to start manufacturing its zero emission capable taxis by the end of this year.
In 2019, however, LEVC will release an electric van – the firm’s first move beyond taxis in its long history. At its core, the van will largely resemble the TX, with the same petrol range extender and battery. “From a strategy point of view, the whole idea was to create an architecture, a platform on which we can build more than one product,” Gubbey says.
In doing so, LEVC is squaring up to some major competition. Tesla has already indicated its interest in commercial vehicles, unveiling its designs for all-electric ‘Tesla Semi’ in November 2017, while Nissan and Renault both have their own all-electric vans. But Gubbey is confident that Geely’s vision of cities full of LEVC-branded electric commercial vehicles is just around the corner, and will be arriving a hell of a lot faster than autonomous cars. The future of inner-city transport just might end up looking an awful lot like its past.
Updated May 30, 2018: This article originally stated that both newly-licensed London taxis and private hire vehicles have to meet London's clean air regulations. The regulations only apply to London taxis.
This article is part of our WIRED on Transport series where we explore the challenges and solutions in transport, such as the future of borders after Brexit, the new race to make supersonic travel work and the hover train that never was.
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