On the face of it there is an oddity about arriving at what is clearly quite a young business park on the northern outskirts of Coventry to visit the head office and factory of a company with London in its title.
The London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) is, however, not about location but history – this is the same manufacturer that under its previous incarnation of the London Taxi Company (LTC) has been involved for the best part of a century in making a vehicle as iconic an image of the UK capital as Big Ben or Tower Bridge.
From 2008, the firm was progressively absorbed by Chinese state-owned manufacturer Geely and in 2017 was rebranded to LEVC to mark the launch of an all-new range-extender electric vehicle (REEV), the TX taxi. A range-extender is similar to a plug-in hybrid in that it has both a petrol engine and an electric motor with a battery. But unlike a plug-in hybrid, the petrol unit cannot drive the wheels and merely acts as a generator to power the electric motor if the battery is depleted.
The TX is steadily replacing the diesel-powered black cabs – by April 2022, 5,000 had been sold with a third of London cabbies now running it. And the REEV taxi is also spreading around the UK and increasingly across the globe as cities increasingly follow London’s lead by setting up clean-air and low-emissions zones.
Over the past year the TX has been joined by the VN5, a compact van directly evolved from its sister vehicle’s hardware. Both are manufactured in the fresh-looking plant at Ansty Park in Coventry, which opened in March 2017. It occupies 37,000m2, cost £90m and created 1,000 jobs in what was once the home of the UK’s global automotive manufacturing industry, so perhaps it’s an appropriate location.
Let the sun shine in
This writer has visited many an automotive production plant and LEVC’s is not at all typical – for a start the interior seems brighter and cleaner than is the norm. It’s helped by one side of the building being dominated by an 81m2​ glazed wall which delivers diffused daylight on to the assembly line, and offers anyone outside a view of vehicles being put together.
Sustainability is a key feature – the roof holds 365 solar panels, producing 95kwh of electricity each day which is used to power machinery and lighting. Waste heat around the plant is recovered and re-used while filtering systems harvest some 750,000 gallons of rainwater and employ it in everything from monsoon-testing vehicles to flushing toilets.
“This is the only dedicated EV plant in the UK” Lloyd Bonson, product manager for both the TX and VN5, states proudly as he takes us on a tour of the huge assembly hall. And assembly is a pertinent point – Geely’s takeover of LTC attracted some questioning of the ‘British-built’ status of the vehicles with critics arguing that ‘manufacture’ was no more than taxis for the UK market being put together from kits of components imported from China.
Bonson argues the point however, contending that while Ansty is still an assembly plant, this is due entirely to the design of its vehicles, while the components for these vehicles now come from a range of suppliers including much European content – not least from Volvo, which Geely now also owns along with Proton, which in turns own sports car maker Lotus.
He points to the fact that there is no large machinery buried in the foundations of this plant. Everything is bolted to the floor and able to be altered to accommodate production changes or new models in only around a week. “The plant design is due to the way we build vehicles here – they have a lightweight shell in bonded aluminium with composite panels glued or bolted on.
“During my time with Ford (Bonson’s long automotive career has included 18 years with with the manufacturer of the van standard-bearer the Transit) I set up Transit facilities in Spain, Turkey and Russia. Here is nothing like building a traditional van, it’s more akin to how Aston Martin or Lotus make their sports cars – I came here from Lotus and it’s very similar.”
“Different to anything else in the van world”
A TX or VN5 starts as a collection of aluminium extrusions which are made by specialist external suppliers. “We are the experts in the finished product and so we let the experts in the metallurgy produce the components and come up with the best process to get the weight and strength requirements we need – it’s very different to anything else in the van world.”
The end of the plant where assembly begins houses hot and cold curing areas, robots putting together the basic structure of the shells by glueing the extrusions before the whole vehicle shell is hot-cured, baked in an oven at 180 degrees. This is followed by plastic parts of the structure being added using infra-red alignment and then being cold cured before the completed shell moves onto the assembly line by means of an overhead conveyor.
LEVC keeps around two to three days’ stock of parts on site. Panels are supplied pre-painted from the supplier; “It’s easier to do that way, they are plastic panels so we have no worry of running a paint shop,” Bonson says. “The lightweight composite panels are bought in and bolted or glued straight onto the vehicle.”
As the shell proceeds down the line it gains firstly its electrical systems and fuel tank (a small 36-litre unit due to the low demand on the petrol engine), then the interior, trim, doors and glass are added. Among the final installations is the powertrain, comprising the small 1.5-litre petrol engine up front but not connected to the wheels (its sole purpose being to generate electricity for the battery) and the rear-mounted electric motor.
Currently the plant operates on a single day shift and staff work via a ‘three-by-three’ system; “Each operation has three operators that can work it and each operator can work three operations. This avoids mundane, monotonous work which can introduce unspotted errors and quality issues,” Bonson says.
As we walk down the line it seems totally dominated by new taxis with only the occasional van, which we are told is due to two large orders for taxis being due to be delivered before the end of the month. Both vehicles are built on the same line with no changes needed to accommodate either. “On any day you might get six taxis, then a couple of vans, then more taxis,” we are told.
A bigger and brighter future
After our factory tour, test drives in both the taxi and the VN5 van serve to show exactly where LEVC is heading. Bonson constantly refers to the products coming out of Ansty as being the best solution “in this transformative period”, offering businesses and individuals the combination of zero-emissions motoring when needed without the charge anxiety that has largely replaced range concerns among hesitant converts to the electric revolution.
So if this is a transformative time does that mean an all-electric TX and VN is could later join the range? Bonson and everyone we meet at LEVC are careful to avoid taking any future plans, but a full BEV would seem to be a logical addition further down the line.
Meanwhile the Ansty plant is clearly future-proofed – its maximum capacity of 20,000 vehicles per annum is a long way ahead of current output. LEVC’s former CEO Joerg Hofmann has previously stated that the company’s goal is “to be the leading European electric commercial vehicle provider”, with a “full range” of electrified commercial vehicles.
So it seems automotive manufacture in at least one part of Coventry is making a major comeback, with a bigger and brighter future…
