Greenest UK Taxi Fleets Revealed (2020-21)
Data gathered between Feb and September 2020 and published March 2021.
With traffic increasing year on year, and cars becoming bigger, badder and “better”, the air quality in large cities has taken a beating for many years.
With the Government planning to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK from 2030, we wanted to investigate how green current UK taxi fleets are and which areas of the country are leading the way when it comes to electrifying their fleets.
We also looked into how the average taxi fleet looks. Which car manufacturer makes a good taxi? And do taxi colour preferences match those of the general public?
Here are Lease Fetcher (personal car leasing and business car leasing deal comparison central), we sent out Freedom of Information requests to the 25 biggest cities in the UK. With the data, we were able to gather a clear overview of which cities have the greenest taxi fleets, and provide some unique insight into what the nation's favourite taxi makes and models are.
How green are UK taxi fleets?
Investigating the fuel spread across the 25 taxi fleets, there is good and bad news.
Starting with the bad news: diesel still reigns supreme on a national scale. Across the 25 cities, 53.74% of all taxis are still diesel-fuelled, and a whopping 72.07% if you exclude London. That’s 80,451 diesel taxis still roaming British roads - and that’s only counting the 25 largest cities!
The good news is that hybrid electric taxis have overtaken petrol-fuelled ones and hold a strong second place with 33.09% of all taxis. Exclude London and the second place is a little less impressive, albeit still a second place, with 12% hybrid taxis.
The fuel charts below show the fuel breakdown of the taxi fleets across the 25 largest UK cities, the first including London, the second excluding.
So, how far away from fully electric taxi fleets are we in the UK? We’ve reached out to a few experts to ask just that.
“At Cab Direct we continue to see the demand for our electric cars increase, however, drivers all over the country still experience difficulty with charging availability when out on long shifts. We need to see more investment into charging networks before this becomes a feasible way of working for taxi drivers,” says Susan Smith, CabDirect.
If a fully electric UK taxi fleet is to become a reality, authorities and car manufacturers need to show initiative and invest in developing both affordable vehicles and an EV friendly infrastructure.
“The transition will be accelerated by the decisions taken in the board rooms at car manufacturers such as Jaguar, who announced this week that they will only produce fully electric cars in the UK from 2025. If other manufacturers follow suit, this will speed up the rollout of electric vehicles across the board,” says John Richardson, FleetCover.
The need for manufacturers and authorities to step up has only increased over the last year with Coronarivus causing havoc across the world.
“Many taxi drivers have been hit hard financially by the Coronavirus pandemic. In return, their ability to invest in EV models that are currently more expensive (though cheaper to run) than their combustion engine counterparts is constrained until life returns closer to pre-Covid times,” says Amer Hasan, Minicabit.
Greenest taxi fleets revealed
So, which of the 25 largest UK cities has the greenest taxi fleets?
Looking at electric taxis by a percentage of the city’s total taxi fleet, there are three green frontrunners:
- Milton Keynes leads the way with 6.57% of their fleet fully electric.
- A close second is Birmingham with 5.67% of their fleet electric.
- Third place goes to London with 4.54% of their fleet electric.
The below table shows the top 10 greenest UK taxi fleets, based on EV percentage.
Worst diesel taxi fleets revealed
Whilst this study does highlight major cities that are doing a good job, it also reveals the cities with the largest diesel fleets.
By percentage of all taxis, the top three diesel offenders are Plymouth (100%), Coventry (97.9%) and Belfast (95.96%).
The table below shows the top 10 diesel-heavy taxi fleets.
For a full overview of the fuel spread across the taxi fleets in the UK’s 25 largest cities, please see the table below:
The nation’s favourite taxi manufacturer
The uncrowned King of taxis is Toyota, accounting for a whopping 31.91% of all taxis in the UKs 25 biggest cities (49,112 taxis).
Mercedes-Benz takes a strong second place with a taxi market share of 13.87% (21,347 taxis).
Third, is LEVC (Also previously known as London Taxi International/ London Taxi Company) with 10.51% (18,067 taxis).
Moving onto the favourite car models used for taxis and you’ve really got three main manufacturing contenders, Toyota, Mercedes and Volkswagen.
In first place, not surprisingly, is the Toyota Prius with a total of 32,927 taxis. A clear winner making out 30.11% of all taxis in the 25 cities.
Second place is the traditional black London Cab, the Hackney Carriage with 9,637 taxis (8.81%).
Toyota grabs another place with the Auris taking a third spot with 7,420 taxis (6.79%)
The above tables represent all taxis, not just electric vehicles.
An issue that comes to mind when investigating how we can increase the uptake of electric vehicles in taxi fleets is the current car model availability. Although there are electric car models that are used both across fleets and for personal use, for example the Auris & Prius, many of the popular car models used for cab work are yet to emerge
Amer Hasan, Minicabit hopes we should start to see more suitable EV cars for the cab sector, such as minivans, emerge from 2024 onwards. Importantly, they should be priced with little/no premiums to combustion engine cars and so should be affordable to deploy on scale.
National colour preference
Of all the taxis registered in the top 25 biggest UK cities in 2020, there was a loud and clear colour favourite. With more than 51,706 taxis or 38.76%, the first place and preferred taxi colour was black.
Comparing the taxi colours to the colour preferences of the general public, the general top 10 share a lot of similarities although the rank of the colours differ.
Below we’ve listed the top 10 taxi colours vs. the top 10 colours for cars registered in 2020. It’s worth noting that the taxi colours are all taxis on the register in 2020, and the SMMT numbers are exclusively new cars registered in 2020:
The future of the UK taxi industry
For a cab driver to get their Private Hire license from their Local Authority, their car cannot be older than 5-14 years old max, depending on the region. As long as this requirement is either kept in place or improved and the 2030 diesel target is honoured - taxi fleets will inevitably become fully electric at some point (5-14 years) after this deadline.
Susan Smith, CabDirect says the speed of EV adoption depends on Government support. “Government support is needed to facilitate this move, firstly to increase the availability and compatibility of charge points and also by providing more grants for those who wish to buy electric. The Government should also be investing directly with taxi manufacturers, allowing them to develop more electric solutions at an affordable price point.”
There’s a lot of talk about flying taxis with the news of the UK’s first taxi/drone airport being built in Coventry. Our expert panel all agree that this is not something that will happen in the near future - not as an affordable transport for the masses anyway.
“For flying taxis, a whole new regulatory framework is required that needs to align airspace with ground transport operations, which may need to operate on a national or city level. We might see ad hoc trials over the next 5 years in the UK though larger cities but it will probably be 2030 by the time a flying taxi service is ready and reasonably affordable for consumers to use,” says Amer Hasan, Minicabit.
Methodology
The data on UK taxi fleets was gathered by use of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. All data was gathered between February and September 2020 and analysed by our in-house team of marketers and can be obtained upon request.
To request a copy of the original and analysed data, please email [email protected].
