London Black Cab TX | Fully Charged

this episode of fully charged is something very interesting indeed it is all about this an absolute icon if you're British this is a London black cab these have been rolling around London since 1948 in 1997 20 years ago they revised it and they brought this one out here this is called the T x4 it's a diesel engine they've never made electric ones before it's quite an inefficient heavy old ox but today things are different because there's an all-new cab and I'm gonna drive it in fact I'm going to drive it from the central London all the way out to Heathrow Airport to go and pick up a man called Robert Llewellyn but check this out it's called the T X and it's a plug in range extender London taxi it looks like the traditional taxi but it's actually completely new it shares no components whatsoever with its old brother and that's kind of a good thing because the old brother was a bit of a dog if you want to know more about the TX which I do there is one person you only need to speak to and it's this guy here Eddie Martin Eddie is the development manager for this entire TX taxi project Eddie it's really good to meet you Johnny good to meet you it's great that it's instantly recognizable as a London cab absolutely but it is it doesn't share any parts with that old thing clean sheet of paper design we've designed this new cab to be the future it's an all-electric taxi we've developed it around a lot of the key requirements for London so the famous turning circle yeah going to develop the car to be able to turn in within eight and a half meters we've developed it to have six passengers in the back no he's really comfortable for the driver okay so more people this is great reminds me of the rolls-royce phantom yes suicide backdoor which their previous card didn't have so it's being because it's it's on but can I just do that I'll show the fully charged viewers what we're talking about when it comes to turning circle look at this we've had to develop a unique suspension so it's a twin axis steer to get a the amount of steering lock you need to get round so it's an incredible steering angle we've had to achieve that's amazing what's going on under here so under here we've got a range extender so a three and a half ceiling 1.5 liter petrol engine is that borrowed from another existing vehicle or so it's it's a new engine part of the gilli family this is the first application it's it's released in okay so that's quite uncommon because in the past taxis have recycled just well-proven engines from other places yeah this is this is like a future-proof cars base but the key to this is really it's an electric vehicle yeah so it's got a thirty one kilowatt-hour battery placed here and the crux of it so it lives under here underneath the driver and luggage compartment come have a look I don't know how many of you have ever been in a London taxi in this position the driving seat the old taxis were incredibly cramped weren't they the packaging was pretty bad and most drivers you speak to they had a slightly offset driving position not enough knee room not enough legroom you know these guys are in here for 12 hours or more sometimes their office but when you get into this the first thing I mean I haven't adjusted the seat to me but it's electric which is very cool first thing you notice is I've recognised the steering wheel gilli the company that owned a little under show vehicle company yeah now they own vulvar they bought Volvo in 2010 yes they've just bought a majority stake in Lotus they've just bought Lotus yes yeah this company of the the bronze manganese black cab company you correct me if I'm wrong was was going to go into liquidation in 2013 yeah so gilli have come on board and put a big investment in to develop an all-new car all-new factory outlet in Coventry to develop this and sell to the world in here you've got a huge touchscreen which I'm going to play with when we start driving all digital dashboard binnacle there's no analog gauges here at all is there no steering wheel which I definitely recognized from a Volvo but you're probably not allowed to say that but I think it is and this is all good because Volvo are known for making really nice luxurious economic automobiles so I don't know why I said automobiles because I'm British let's just call them cars of course it's electric so you've got a little shifter here got a start/stop button which again I recognise from a Volvo keyless entry neat little key look lock and unlock here just neat cupholder on a like an adjustable rail Eddie yeah there's an adjustable rail for different accessories when we sail around the world all different markets need to be catered for in the back here this is the business end this is exciting because what we're sitting in is not a steel car is it no so it's an aluminium car bonded together so we bond the aluminium panels together hock you of them in an oven and then glue on or bond on composite panels the last car is based on a design from 58 pretty much it's it's a much older design that's evolved over time yeah because that is like a you know a 50s British separate body chassis yeah it's a body on frame whereas this is a unibody like all the modern products like ours like what's going on and under the floor of the passengers so you've got the battery in the front that all the HV components to drive the car are here and then you've got an electric drive motor at the back so it's a 120 kilowatt peak output electric motor in the back yeah yeah and at the front the range extender is a 60 kilowatt petrol range extender okay so 1.5 3 cylinder it never drives the wheels it only charges the battery packs they live under the driver's seat and the here is the controller and the other high voltage or the high voltage car situation single motor back here rear-wheel drive yep rear-wheel drive like all London cabs and you'll come to this in a minute when we set off into the London chaos but it's a really airy big space absolute and panoramic roof great feature you know if you're driving past Big Ben in the after tree on the Sydney Harbour Bridge amazing view for the for the passengers is this a bigger car than the TX 4 yeah so it's a bit longer a little bit wider in the body same overall width though and a little bit taller just to give you that extra room it's great and like I say six seats or three back here where I am and you got three here wander II dropped out a to you all with hairdress okay so that swivels out of course this is the recess for the driver the driver lives behind this anti attack screen and whatever you want to call it you've got a payment system just right here which I guess would be all your usual cards contactless stuff yep loads of them I've noticed here here USB charge points always good everyone's life line these days phone chatter lutely and we've really tried to design it for everybody in the community so we've designed it there's an access ramp that lives under here so people in wheelchairs are able to come in here and travel in the vehicle for defacing and we've also made it so that there's still two seats here that people with a disability wheelchair users can take - friends family carers whoever they need to bring along with them [Music] I've got the paper I got the coffee cuz I'm a proper cabbie now put me paper up here cuz there's binnacle 's above my head two of just quite neat and you got your fare up here but listen to this [Music] basically the start of jingle bells regardless of the season I've already synced my phone with the Bluetooth got da B got an interesting driver performance record but we're just going to get cracking now well I have driven both previous cabs before albeit fairly high mileage I'm not gonna lie they weren't the most comfortable things in the world they were probably the smelliest things in the world I doubt the knowledge but I do have nice touchscreen sat-nav on my tablet so we're going to go and fetch Bobbie Llewellyn it's the coldest day in Britain this year apparently it's quite cold outside we've got the the heating on got the screens being cleared got a nice electric seat adjustment you see it like a van actually and vans these days are very good so there's no bad thing the weight of the brake pedal is really good it's just right because a lot of electric cars I find the brake pedals too sensitive and too grabby this car you say is slightly taller yeah it's a little bit taller than the current t-rex poor but I think it gives really a commanding driving position to give you good visibility in the city and and we've got regen braking that we can play with three levels of regen braking so you've got zero which is nothing you'll just glide along yeah one which is a medium setting and then two which is the more aggressive one which is like a gentle brake I'm getting enviously ID up by other black cab drivers and you assume with a 50 kilowatt charger yeah so the 50 kilowatt charger you can get an 80% boost to your battery in about 25 minutes that's quite impressive yeah so it's sort of designed when the cabbies taking a break for lunch put it on charge give a good boost and then you can run it all afternoon the thing is the ability to drive up to 80 miles evey only is is actually a massive range in an urban area like London doing what doing this did was it you that said to me the average speed of central London traffic is 8 to 10 miles an 8 to 10 miles an hour and in the centre of London well my wife walks quicker than that so that's very slow indeed 80 miles doing that level of stop start is is huge you can potentially drive around all day we're doing a slightly longer journey in this instance but that's all part of the fun you can hold the battery can't you so you can fully charge the battery and hold it yes if you live in the outer suburbs and you want to drive into the day into a zero emissions centre of the city you can put it in save mode it'll run the range extender maintain your level of charge and then you can switch it to electric Here I am in the bus lane driving legally in the bus lane which is a first for me but I have to say the quietness that you that I really appreciate in electric cars works great here because usually you're engaged in a conversation either the taxi driver to the customer or you're on your phone doing some business call or you just want to appreciate a bit of magic fm I was reading the the press release about it and I know there's there's been a huge focus on making this car safer and more luxurious the luxury is clear the safety well you can explain that to me perhaps yes so we've really tried to make this car to the highest modern European standard so looking at full frontal barrier offset barrier side barriers so that you know the passengers and Driver are the safest they could possibly be but not only passive safety or what we call passive safety so if you're having an accident but active safety we've really tried to work on as well yeah so having emergency autonomous braking and stability control as standard across the range should hopefully prevent you having the accident in the first place the idea also behind this car is critical that their owner drivers of these that you know that they're investing in them this is a tool for a job this is your livelihood so if you can make the running cost cheaper and cheaper and the car more and more reliable this a no-brainer isn't it absolutely what are the running costs of this compared to the outgoing so it's about hundred pounds a week safe in terms of running costs over the knees this ting tx4 really and when you look at the lease options in terms of buying it the existing the current tx4 is 167 pounds a week this one is 177 pounds a week so it's only ten pound a week more but look at the savings you can have I was talking to one of the sort of veteran cab drivers who's been experimenting and testing this for the last seven weeks the first thing he said to me was he said I was I wasn't a believer at first but after spending a few days with it he said my existing cab his tx4 he said I cannot get more than about 20 21 miles per gallon however I Drive it he said this even when the generators running and you've got all of the energy stepping appliances on I'm still getting over 50 mpg with that and of course when you're not running the Genny it's pure electric which comes down to how much you're paying for your electricity but I mean in its that in itself when you're doing when you're sitting in traffic this why I can't believe is that the old cab didn't have start/stop ignition they said no brainer isn't it because look there's a cab sitting right next to me and it's running and we're parked and the cab in front is sitting there and it's running and it's parked and all you're doing is burning diesel the whole time and diesel is profit oh good lad good lad got let out by a fellow cabbie it's always nice and when you come to London you expect to see icons and if you're a tourist you expect to see these iconic parts of street furniture and that is a double-decker bus and a black cab the double-decker bus has been a hybrid now for several years and it's fantastic reinvention of a classic line this I hope will do the same you look at it you instantly recognize it as a black cap which is a London icon but finally it's got the propulsion that it always really needed am i right in thinking that productions going to be ramped up to be able to make 20,000 of these a year so the total capacity their plans 20,000 and will ramp up as many as we can sell but yet big factory big investment in Coventry UK manufacturing [Music] oh where is he ah oh here he is here he is oh my god amazing hello son hello where am I going - oh the ritz-carlton I swear I've seen you before why is it Midsomer Murders boy it's great did it it's really nice wow it's really comfy this is a real car review involving proper journeys yeah useful practical journeys well sir I'll take you wherever you want to go in the new cab this is so that is so bizarre that it isn't going you know old these are ones of such Rattlers I was going to say how many hundreds of journeys have you done in the diesel one well a few I have to admit yeah and they're not brilliant are they because I love cabbies and they're very funny and then they won that yeah like like you'd say with I seen you you're at bloke like the most common one I get is I had Craig Charles in the back of here yesterday he was asleep do you know how far you've driven on because presumably it was charged up when you got it it was charged up I've got about 50 miles of evie only left Wow yeah you've been you been tooling around London today yeah I've been stuck in traffic all over the place yeah I've been averaging 8 miles an hour as there's the usual way so but I've been properly testing it in its home environment right yeah this is what it's going to be used you a ton of start/stop yeah going on however really quite relaxing and comfortable despite the fact that it's a joyless place to drive you know I have to say you've got this angled tablet touchscreen chisel right and it's it's really really intuitive I like it which has got you know da B phone connectivity really crisp reversing camera it's got Lane and Lane Departure assist it's autonomous emergency braking loads of tech which you get in quite a high end yeah southern cars yeah so they've gone to town on it to try and make it future-proof the total range is about 400 miles whether it would like with a full battery full tank of gas yeah a of those miles Eevee only the rest range extender so it's it's a generator right doesn't connect to the wheels I mean it can't match your Tesla for performance Bob no but you don't want that in a taxi that's no that's about it but that was pretty that's very Swift yeah look at that very smooth yeah we can chip on all right for me crucially you've got two three stages of regen braking that you can play with right oh that's good so it's got adaptive regen you can yeah increase I've got it in the most aggressive now so if I let off the throttle now that's as aggressive as he get wow that's not there's no you didn't touch the brakes though no no no no that's just letting off the throttle so the idea is that the service intervals of this thing at 25,000 miles right and your brake pads which normally lasts about seven eight thousand miles in a normal cab are probably going to last a lot longer because the region they drive once people get used to driving it because you take somewhat because they will be jamming the brakes on all the time yeah all the time [Music] get proper it I don't get angry big will you doing but there's others out there that get a little bit hot behind the wheel and you know sometimes sometimes they need a little strap I think I've reached your destination perfect brilliant how much is that then chief to you yeah eighty quid I'd give you $20 $20 sounds good to me as long as I get a swivel for the boy there's a 20 keep the change chief god bless ya see you soon oh this is just all falls play oh I'll go that way check that going now that Robert the way that he's a charming man always happy never seems upset [Music] you

Channel: fullychargedshow

Views: 474,222

Rating: 4.8703876 out of 5

Keywords: Fully Charged Show, Fully Charged, electric car, electric vehicles, smart grid, micro grid, renewable energy, sustainable development, solar panels, solar, battery, storage, Robert Llewellyn, Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge, internal combustion, diesel, fossil fuel, oil, refinery, eco power, Jonny Smith, carpervert, LEVC, London Black Cab, TX, E-City, London, Heathrow, electric taxi, passive safety, active safety, Geely, traffic, zero emission

Id: qOxnJQP2_0E

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

That was excellent. I'll be psyched to see these, over the years, overtake the TX4.

[u/Streetwind]

It's a car that's more comfortable for the driver, more comfortable for the passengers, safer for the driver, safer for the passengers, and is better for the environment.

Plus the monthly sum of leasing rate plus fuel cost plus congestion charges is hundreds of pounds less than the old cab. So there's literally no downside for the driver to switch over. Even without any of the advantages outlined above, the driver will take home extra money every single day, for the same amount of work invested. And it needs service far less often, which means it's more reliable, which in turn means that for the driver, there is less anxiety over your livelihood suddenly breaking down without warning.

Seriously - I would think the only reason for any cab driver to not switch over immediately would be that they cannot build them fast enough.

[u/ripyourbloodyarmsoff]

Links:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEVC_TX

• http://www.theelectrictaxi.co.uk/the-taxi/