London’s Black Cabs Bet Future on 119-Year-Old Technology
- Switch to battery-powered vehicles seen boosting air quality
- Electric taxis could create U.K. export industry to Europe
Bersey's 1897 electric taxi.
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London’s iconic black cabs are banking their future on a 19th century technology: the electric motor.
To help solve the U.K. capital’s smog problems, London Taxi Co. is turning to methods of propulsion used by forerunners at the London Electrical Cab Co., which from 1897 ran a fleet of 80 battery-powered cars designed by Walter C. Bersey. That first electric-motor taxi trial fizzled out in 1899 after the costly vehicles, which drove only slightly faster than a horse, were scrapped for internal-combustion engines powered by gas.