Chances are they won’t be black or put together with the steering wheel on the other side, but London’s iconic cabs should hit Europe’s city streets next year.
According to the London Taxi Company (LTC) chief executive Chris Gubbey, in fact, its parent company (the Chinese automaker Geely) is aiming for a ten-fold increase in output to around 10,000 cabs by the turn of the decade.
In spite of the potential instabilities regarding the access to the EU market after Brexit, the cab-maker pushed ahead with its investment plan, and neared completion of a new factory in central England.
The firm has in fact invested £300m in the the new Coventry plant, and Gubbey told Reuters that plans had remained unchanged, despite concerns and uncertainty around the country’s future trading arrangement with the rest of Europe.
Among the first cities to see London’s cabs may be Oslo, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin, which have all been visited by LTC executives in recent months.
However, Gubbey declined to confirm which cities would be included in the initial market expansion, simply stating that they would “start selling [the cars] in 2018”.
He also acknowledged the difficulties represented by trying to break into markets that have long been dominated by other brands.
“They tend to be very nationalistic in their product and I think knowing that, we have to very sensible about what we believe can be our rate of climb in terms of market share,” he said.