The London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) reports that its range-extender electric TX taxi now accounts for 40% of all licensed black cabs on London’s streets, now outnumbering equivalent diesel models in the capital.
With Coventry-based manufacturer LEVC now only producing battery-powered vehicles, the once dominant TX4 diesel cab is now in decline, as Transport for London aims to meet its low emissions targets.
The TX taxi is a ‘range-extender’, which means it 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.
On electric power alone, the TX can officially muster 78 miles. When assisted by the range-extender engine, the cab can reportedly handle up to 333 miles of travel.
First arriving in 2018, over 6,000 official London cabbies are now running this electric black cab, and the manufacturer adds that TX models have accumulated more than 534 million miles across the globe, estimating that this has saved 162,000 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
