I Drove A London’s Black Taxi And Discovered Why They Are Some Of The Best Purpose-Built Vehicles On Earth

To drive one of London’s iconic black taxi cabs you first must pass the hardest test in the world. It’s called, cryptically, The Knowledge and dates back to the 1800s. The name itself implies the totality of the task. Less a quiz than a quest. Those who dare to try it must memorize all of London’s 25,000 roads and streets, 320 different pre-determined routes, and every major landmark. It takes years.

That’s what you have to do in order to attain the coveted green badge that allows you to drive a metered black taxi anywhere in London. I just had to tweet out a picture of myself in London last summer and someone who works for the parent company of the London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC), which makes the black taxis, asked me if I would like to drive one.

“Sure, next time in London” I said, with no plan to come to London but an idea that I had to do it soon and before this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity vanished.

A few months later I was back in London standing in a showroom staring at the plug-in hybrid LEVC TX. Had I used those months in between memorizing how to get from, say, the Islington Police Station to the British Museum? I did not. Had I even used the few days I was in London prior to getting the cab to learn anything? Ehh…

I just showed up with Adrian, The Autopian‘s goth uncle car designer, and assumed I’d Immediately figure it out.

I did not.

The History Of ‘The Knowledge’

No one knows for sure what happened, but there’s a story people seem to like and is quasi-officially what London’s transport agency, Transport For London (Tfl), endorses.

Hot on the heels of the Industrial Revolution, the Victorians decided to throw a party to show off all the stuff they’d made (and, ahem, acquired). The Great Exhibition of 1851 is considered by historians to be the most “influential cultural event of the 19th century.” This was sort of the original World’s Fair and brought together art, crafts, performers, and inventions from around the world. Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Brönte, and even Karl Marx were there. The spectators on hand were amazed by an adding machine that could add numbers up to 299.

It was a huge success, but getting to Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was apparently a huge ass-pain.

From Tfl’s history:

Hundreds of thousands of people visited the event – with many going on to complain to the authorities about just how bad their journeys had been because cabmen didn’t know the route. What was called for was a system that could test the cabmen’s knowledge of the principal streets, squares and public buildings in London.

Cabs at this point were of the horse-drawn variety and GPS service was extra poor on account of satellites not having been invented yet. So a test was created. Today it’s a multi-year process to get a green badge and Tfl, which administrates the test, suggests to potential drivers that “most people who apply to become a licensed taxi driver and take the Knowledge of London exam use a moped/scooter to help learn the runs.”

Memorizing the area within six miles of Charing Cross station is a herculean mental test and takes some drivers four years to ace the exam. London has expanded over the centuries and, viewed on Google Maps, it’s less the rigidly rectangular layout of a Manhattan and instead something more organic, like a complex animal cell viewed under a microscope. Cabbies have to memorize a dense tangle of narrow minor streets, slightly less narrow major thoroughfares, and circuses–which is what the locals call circles, even the ones that aren’t circles at all. Scientists have proven that cab drivers who have successfully completed The Knowledge have enlarged the part of the brain that controls memory.

Here’s how cab driver and author Peter Allen describes trying to learn it:

First, we do something called the Blue Book, which is 320 runs that take you all the way around the city. The first run is Manor House to Gibson Square. You start by spending at least an hour and a half driving round Manor House station, learning the area. After that, you drive on, past eight different places of interest listed in the book, discovering how to get in and out, and making notes. Then at Gibson Square, you explore the area again.

In between runs, you do something known as “calling over”. In a group of two or three people, you sit around a map on a table and ask each other to describe the quickest route between two places. Then you look at it on the map, and work out if you’ve gone the correct route. You just keep going over the same thing again and again and again until eventually it sinks in. It helps to do it with other Knowledge students; trying to practise with your partner is the quickest route to a breakup.

Thankfully for my partner, I didn’t try at all.

The Iconic Black Taxi

The transition from horse-drawn carriages to the black taxis we all know and love started with electric cars. The Berseys–named after designer Water C. Bersey–were a fleet of battery-powered cabs serving Londoners at the turn of the 19th century. While conceptually they were ahead of their time, the London Vintage Taxi Association’s cab history notes that the cabs left a lot to desire practically as “they proved costly and unreliable and there were a number of accidents, including one fatality.”

The cabs were quickly withdrawn and, as with automobiles around the world, replaced with gas-powered vehicles, many of which were imported from France. Numerous cab companies using a wide variety of cabs sprung up. Not all of these vehicles quite worked as cabs and so the authorities set out the Condition of Fitness–a set of guidelines that determined how a vehicle would need to be able to perform to be a licensed cab in London. The British love their bureaucracy.

One of the most important characteristics of a cab was that it had to have a 25-foot turning circle so that it could drop a passenger off in the tiny court in front of the tony Savoy Hotel, lest a hotel guest have to endure something as offensive as waiting for a cab to back up. In a world where everything feels bigger, the Savoy Court is the same size, so even modern taxis have to maintain that same tight turning circle.

The story of LEVC, whose cab I would soon drive, starts with JJ Mann and Tom Overton, who began importing cabs and eventually cornered most of the market with their taxis. Shortly after WWII, Mann and Overton contracted with Austin to make a new cab, the FX3, with a host of improvements including a sliding glass partition for the passengers and actual weather protection for the drivers.

But the most important change was the body, created by taxi design company Carbodies of Coventry, with that characteristically tall greenhouse, stiff-upper-lip grille flanked by single round headlights, and that little flourish of classic luxury in the form of a kink below the passenger window that wraps around the ‘boot’ and gives the impression of an old carriage hauling a trunk full of shooting gear. This was the first true ‘black taxi.’

More generations of the FX would follow under various iterations of the company, but they’d all maintain that same recognizable shape. Despite having the market cornered, the last iteration of the company went into bankruptcy, only to be absorbed into Chinese automaker Geely, which also owns classic British automaker Lotus, Swedish automaker Volvo, and a bunch of other car companies. Which is where my journey begins.

A Showroom Full Of Just Taxis Is A Strange Place To Be

After a quick breakfast at a terribly popular and also kind of terrible hipster coffee shop, Adrian and I make our way under London via the tube to the LEVC London Central showroom, right where Agar Grove turns into Brewery Road. Inside the dealership, there’s a line of used cars against the wall, representing various trims of the LEVC TX, the latest plug-in electric gas hybrid.

“Seems a bit pricy,” I tell Adrian, eyeing a Vista Comfort Plus model with almost 100,000 miles on the clock listed for £41,495. This was before I’d driven one and understood the value.

The very nice folks at the showroom said they needed to clean the taxi first, which, as time went on, made me a little nervous given what normally ends up in New York City cabs. To kill time Adrian and I poke around like the would-be cabbies we are.

It’s almost a bizarro world experience as this showroom has everything a normal showroom has, but it’s all cab-flavored. Amidst the rows of multi-colored cabs, are LEVC polos and hats, and even LEVC accessories. You can get LEVC-themed rain guards (£130) floor mats (£75 each), and a phone holder (£130).

The signs are all the signs you’d expect, like ones advertising a warranty, but in insane cabbie proportions (for instance, Adrian spies one proudly proclaiming a “3-year, 120,000-mile warranty”).

Eventually, Adrian and I discover an unlocked model and start trying to grasp the dimensions of the TX. I assume, as a former resident, Adrian would understand intrinsically how the passenger compartment of the cab worked. This assumption is quickly proven incorrect.

“Its, uh… I know it should work, but it doesn’t,” Adrian says, continually trying to fold the seats together to create room for six passengers.

Adrian is my guide to London, so this isn’t a great sign.

“Oh, like this!” he says, proudly pulling a lever behind the middle seat to get it to swing out.

The nice woman who works at the dealership comes over and informs us that our cab is ready and makes sure we sign a few forms agreeing to not do anything untoward with the cab. They even scan Adrian’s driving records to make sure he’s up to snuff. I have no British driving records, so they just shrug it off and give me the keys.

It’ll be fine. Just hand the lunatic with no driving records a cab. What could go wrong?

Never Mind The Bollards

The plan is for Adrian to drive first, given that he’s spent time as a courier and knows the city fairly well. Given his inability to even arrange seats I nervously climb in the back. Our destination is the famous Ace Cafe, the birthplace of motorcycle culture in England and one of the most historic and influential places for those inclined toward getting around on two wheels. A handful of readers are waiting there for us.

“Perfect, we’re on the A1,” Adrian exclaims as if I have any idea what he means.

It turns out British roads are divided thusly:

• A-Roads: The original highways of Britain, arranged in a circle around London.
• B-Roads: Smaller local roads. When a British journo talks about ‘bombing down a B-road’ that’s what they’re talking about.
• Motorways: These are noted M (M1, M49, et cetera) and are much like America’s Interstates.
• C, D… U: Any smaller road.

The A1 is the Great North Road of England, pointing straight north out of London and connecting to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. We’ve promised to have the cab back before the shop closes, so the Ace Cafe on the far edge of London seems far enough.

Adrian’s making his way carefully in the middle lane while I harass him using the TX’s intercom, which is activated by a large button in the passenger compartment.

“Go in the bus lane! What’s the point of being in a cab if you can’t take the bus lane?”

Being British, Adrian is concerned that this isn’t proper since the cab may not be registered.

“What are they gonna do to us?”

“Well, alright then!”

And off we go.

The amount of space inside feels very much like Dr. Who’s TARDIS in that it feels much bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside, helped immensely by the panoramic moon roof. We only carry a couple of bags with us but I feel like I could fit everything I own in here and still have room in the official luggage compartment, which isn’t in the trunk but, for historical and practical reasons, where the passenger would normally sit in the front.

Adrian loves cars and is thoughtful and careful in a way that, as a long-time car reviewer and even longer-time dipshit, I am not. He makes sure to keep a great distance between other cars, not push any buttons erroneously, and otherwise obey all posted signs.

He does get a little too comfortable with the cab and, by the time we arrive, Adrian decides to back up into a spot.

Longtime reader/member/contributor Doug is there and I can see him waving wildly as Adrian backs towards a pole. Somehow, amazingly, Adrian stops the cab with maybe two millimeters to spare.

This Thing Is Tight

Lunch at the Ace Cafe London couldn’t be more pleasant. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity on a visit you need to go. Mark, who runs the place, greets us outside and we all stand around smoking and chatting about cars. Someone brings a delightful little Lotus and we chat about it for a while. Because it’s London it starts raining almost immediately so we all run inside

Vacation rules apply to my meal choices and I’m encouraged by everyone to get the “British Breakfast” which includes 2 eggs, 2 bacon rashers, a sausage, mushrooms, beans, buttered toast, and a grilled half of a tomato that’s there to make sure the plate isn’t just shades of brown. It’s delicious and our pal/contributor Alex Goy even captures me in the process of admiring it.

One technicality of my borrowing the LEVC TX is that I’m not allowed to accept a fare. But that’s just a technicality and, as luck would have it, one of our readers needs a lift. Since I’m going to refuse payment it’s not a fare.

Getting into the cab it immediately feels familiar. This is partially due to the fact that it’s just a car, but also because it’s a car made by Geely, which means a lot of what is inside the cabin area is just a cheaper version of Volvo stuff I’ve already driven.

The main navigation/infotainment screen is flanked by buttons that are identical to what you’d find on an XC40, but connected to a much smaller and lower-quality screen. The steering wheel buttons are also straight out of the Volvo parts bin, though the wheel itself is made of a sturdier fake leather.

Hoping to set up a little photo with some other cars I get to first test out the extremely tight turning radius of the TX. While 25 feet isn’t Smart Car-tight, compare that to about 19 feet for the much smaller Audi TT next to it. A Chevy Tahoe, which is how we move seven people in America, needs almost 40 feet to make a U-Turn. It’s quite remarkable.

After the photo and goodbyes, Adrian and our member Renny (real name changed to protect the innocent) take off back into London.

A Texan Cabbie In London

“Where to guvnah!” I pronounce into the cab’s intercom before realizing my cockney accent hasn’t improved since playing an orphan in the play version of Oliver back in 6th grade. I shift tactics and drop straight into my suppressed East Texas accent.

“Where y’all wanting to go.”

“Oh, I think you’re heading back to where I’m going, so anywhere is fine” Renny politely offers.

The scenic route it is…

Problems begin almost immediately. There are too many buttons. I love buttons and am easily distracted. I haven’t driven in England the whole trip and so when I should be deciding which is the correct mode of traffic I’m instead trying to see if I can start a fare.

I find a gap in between cars but scarcely notice the car coming the other direction.

“Oh God” I hear Adrian mutter from the backseat. Whereas his driving technique was prim and proper mine is more improvisational.

Thankfully, the TX is a range-extended plug-in hybrid like David’s BMW i3, so it’s always being propelled by a rear-mounted, 148-horsepower electric motor. This means there’s enough shove to scoot this thing out of the way of oncoming traffic. While 0-62 mph is a meager 13.2 seconds, it doesn’t feel slow up to about 8 mph, which is where this car will mostly live.

The top speed of the TX is limited to 80 mph, which is probably wise, but I accelerate onto the A1 anyway just to see how the car responds. Much to my surprise, the TX stays planted. The relatively low weight (under 5,000 pounds) and low center of gravity combine to make something that, while not sporting, feels very much like any other crossover you’d drive.

“I don’t think he has a glittering career as a cab driver in front of him,” Adrian says from the back, which I take personally.

The good news is I’ve figured out how to use the taxi meter and I can hit a button to charge Adrian an extra 40 pence every time he mouths off. As we move down the highway traffic slows so I try to find a radio station. Having passed The Knowledge, many London cabbies pride themselves on being able to give a great history of the place. I haven’t, so I wanted to see what kind of tunes I could get on the FM receiver.

“Smooth, there’s a lot of smooth… Smooth Country Kent. Smooth Kent Kent,” I explain. “Smooth double-kent.”

As I make my British radio jokes we come across an accident involving a bus, a Mercedes A-Class, and a Tesla. It’s pretty grim and, for a second, I realize I should probably be paying attention to the road while we’re going faster. But just for a second.

We quickly exit the highway and I start exploring the side roads of London. The LEVC has wonderful visibility as the greenhouse is about as large and open as the one in Kew Gardens. This does make me counterintuitively nervous and I ask my passengers if it feels like I’m drifting into parked cars. This feeling is heightened by the incessant beeping I assume is some form of proximity warning.

“No, you’re fine” they assure me.

“It keeps beeping at me” I complain.

“That’s the speed limit warning!”

Oops. Much of where we’re driving has a 20 mph speed limit and, as an American, this is unusual to me. It takes a lot of effort to drive that slow, which is perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of London’s taxi drivers. I’m driving what feels like a safe speed and, yet, the TX is constantly reminding me that I’m being a jerk.

So be it. I cannot drive particularly smoothly or slowly. I have no real idea where I’m going. I figure the least I can do is be friendly.

I assume there’s some sort of secret nod or wave that cabbies share with other accomplished cabbies. I don’t know what this is so I just start waving and smiling at every cab driver who comes across our path.

For some reason, they don’t seem to like this. Have they gathered that I’m not a real cabbie? Do they sense that I’m a usurper? One of the other cabbies looks me right in my eyeballs and gives me a mug so mean it chills me for a second.

“I know what you’re doing and I don’t like it” he seems to be trying to tell me, telepathically.

Oh well! I keep trying and, eventually, I get a friendly wave from either a super nice cab driver or another person who stole a cab.

I’m close to LEVC’s showroom and so I ask Renny if there’s any particular place I should drop him and he insists that “No, right here is fine” either of out a sense of politeness or a sense of self-preservation. Maybe both.

My career as a cabbie only lasts an afternoon, encompasses one ride, and, because I kept futzing with the meter, has netted me 0 pounds in actual fare with £7.20 in extras.

The LEVC TX Is A Smart Solution To The Cab Problem

While I must admit that Adrian is right and I’d probably not make it as a professional cabbie, I do understand why the LEVC is a good fit. Yes, it’s expensive at $84,000, but local incentives bring the cost is closer to $76,000 for a wheelchair-equipped Vista.

As a range-extended hybrid the TX also makes a lot of sense. The average cabbie in London is estimated to do about 70-100 miles of driving in a day and the battery and, on the WTLP cycle, the 34.6 kWh battery should give the revised TX an electric range of about 78 miles.

Under the hood of the TX is a small, 1.5-liter Volvo-sourced three-cylinder engine that acts as a generator and can provide an additional 255 miles of range for a total of 333 miles. While the 50 kW charging isn’t as fast as most modern electric cars, it can still get the vehicle up to 80% of charge from 20% in a half-hour or so from empty on a 50 kW charger.

Where the TX is a massive improvement on the i3 is in the size of its gas tank, which can hold almost 10 gallons of fuel, which is about 4x what the BMW can hold. This means a cabbie can finish a day’s work and not have to worry about losing out just because he or she couldn’t find a charger. The TX is also not just for cabbies in London. Plenty of other cab drivers in England and other parts of the world use them. There’s even a van variant.

As David has pointed out, our plug-in hybrids aren’t good enough, and the big reason is range. From an environmental standpoint, the TX makes a lot of sense.

And as an owner-operator, the TX makes a lot of sense, too. Not only is the vehicle purpose-built for this, the running costs are estimated to be quite low. LEVC themselves estimate it should cost roughly $14 to do a 120-mile shift with about 20 minutes of downtime to charge in the middle of the shift.

By comparison, a traditional hybrid that gets 40 mpg in London would need about $16 worth of fuel at today’s pricing.

Plus, just look at it. I’ve driven plenty of vans in Europe and the driving experience was roughly similar. But none of them made me feel as cool. These cabs are special. They’re part of a long lineage of British cabbies that goes back almost 200 years and they’re as quintessentially British as beans-on-toast, The Rolling Stones, and royal weirdness.

For one day I was the worst cab driver in all of London, but London is the Big League of cab driving. Or, I guess, London is the Premiere League of cab driving. To be a bad cab driver here is cooler than being even a mediocre cab driver in Paris.

Still, next time I’ll probably leave it to the professionals.