Zero-emissions taxi brings investment and jobs to Coventry

A new £250m research, development and assembly facility to design and build the next generation of more environmentally-friendly London taxis will generate around a thousand jobs and an apprenticeship scheme for the London Taxi Company at its base near Coventry. The investment is being made by the Zheijiang Geely Holding Group (Geely), the Chinese investment company which bought the London Taxi Company out of administration in 2013.

London Taxi Company has been based in Ansty, near Coventry since 1948; over 130,000 of the capital’s iconic black cabs have rolled off the assembly lines since. The new 850,000m² facility will house all of LTC’s R&D and assembly, eventually having the capacity to assemble 36,000 vehicles per year; ten times the numbers the current plant can manage.

Its first task will be to develop an ultra-low emissions model to comply with new taxi regulations established by the Mayor of London, which come into force in 2018, demanding that all taxis be capable of zero emissions operation and must operate in this mode in areas where air-quality is a concern; notably in central London. LTC says this vehicle will be developed with ‘significantly increased’ UK and EU content compared with previous vehicles. It will be introduced to the UK in 2017, replacing the familiar TX4 cab, and will be sold for international markets from the following year.