By all rights the 2007 black cab driving through London on a sunny summer day should be on its way out. Taxis older than 12 years are not eligible for licences in the city, to try to cut air pollution. But this one is different: under its bonnet is an electric battery and motor.
That would not have been immediately obvious to the family trying to hail the Guardian’s cab on a test drive by the River Thames.
The boxy black vehicle is a familiar sight on London’s streets, but with a very different feel. After being retrofitted by a startup, Clipper Automotive, it has the smooth and near silent acceleration of an electric motor, replacing the previous juddering diesel engine. The taxi is part of a small but growing industry replacing polluting fossil fuel engines with much cleaner electric power.
EV conversions have already extended well beyond London cabs, to almost anything that previously ran on petrol or diesel. Classic cars can be upgraded to run without exhaust emissions. Several companies are “upcycling” vans to make them run on batteries; Equipmake re-engineers buses in Norfolk; and New Electric in the Netherlands even creates battery-powered tractors and rollers.
Beyond automotive, entrepreneurs are targeting boats and even planes – although battery ranges limit planes to the shortest journeys for now. Companies such as Swytch, Electric Bike Conversions and Dillenger cater to those who want to speed up their pushbikes.
The principle is consistent: why scrap a perfectly good vehicle when you can just add a battery and motor instead?
Osman Boyner founded Bedeo to convert delivery vans to electric for last-mile deliveries. Bedeo has worked with Stellantis, the world’s third largest carmaker, to offer electric versions of new Vauxhall, Peugeot and Citroën vans. The FTSE 100 retailer Ocado also uses a handful of Bedeo’s electric vans to deliver online grocery orders.
Boyner says the key to making conversions profitable is looking at vehicles whose owners have spent heavily on features behind the engine, and who could then benefit from the much lower running and maintenance costs of electric vehicles.
Conversions cost between £20,000 and £40,000 depending on battery size, but fleets should make that back in about three years in fuel savings alone, Boyner says. By comparison, a fully fitted refrigerated van might cost £70,000.
Boyner hopes to convince owners of the likes of refrigerated vans, ambulances and even camper vans that they can keep the body of the vehicle and just swap out its engine.
“When you want to change, do you want to invest all over again?” Boyner adds. “It’s a niche, but a big one. The more the money is spent [on the existing vehicle], the more the market opportunity.”
The economic case
There are some perils with upgrading an older vehicle: in the Clipper retrofitted cab your correspondents were briefly unable to exit, as the old locking system went on the blink. Vehicles will have to meet safety standards after conversion as well. But Clipper hopes that upgrading will make economic sense for taxi owners who do not want to pay the £67,000 a new (hybrid) cab from the London Electric Vehicle Company costs.
At a taxi shelter by Embankment station, an actual cabbie proudly shows off his 100% electric Nissan taxi. But there are not many of those: launched in 2019, the model was canned in 2022 when the Japanese carmaker stopped making the vans on which it was based.
Alex Howard, Clipper’s founder, reckons he can convert an old cab for £30,000. The company, which will be crowdfunding soon, was born in his parents’ garage, where he made the first engine prototype after furlough and redundancy during the pandemic. Now, its main workshop is in a taxi service centre in Hackney, amid curious drivers, who see them working and spread the word about the electric future.
Howard takes batteries and a motor from old Nissan Leaf electric vehicles, adds the charging electrics and then fits them in place of the diesel engine – leaving the rest of the taxi intact. The two, 20kWh batteries are split between the engine space and the boot, giving about 150 miles of range. The finishing touch is inserting a charger connection in the front grille.
Howard says the government should offer financial incentives to convert vehicles. But more immediately, he wants government to remove bureaucratic systems that are simply not set up to handle conversions.
One example is London’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) that charges drivers of more polluting cars £12.50 a day. But it relies on emissions data from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), which cannot be changed easily.
Bedeo’s vehicles produce none of the nitrous oxides or other harmful gases of diesel engines, but they have repeatedly been charged for entering the Ulez. Transport for London says it “will continue to feed into the development of the DVLA’s policy” and that it would “find a way forward” with Bedeo. However, it says: “Only vehicles formally classified by the DVLA as meeting the Ulez standards will be eligible for a refund.” TfL also says that it would consider converted taxis for approval, but had not yet done so.
Carbon savings
Reusing old vehicles could also have environmental benefits. Ben Nelmes, the chief executive of New AutoMotive, a thinktank focused on electric vehicles, says: “It has quite a bit of potential for carbon emissions savings.”
Manufacturing a standard, mid-sized electric vehicle produces about 8.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), compared with about 5.6 tonnes for a petrol or diesel car, according to the Zemo Partnership, a campaign group. About 40% of those emissions come from battery production, but reusing the vehicle’s structure could save the remaining 5.1 tonnes of carbon.
Bigger vehicles mean bigger savings. David Lorenz, founder of Upcycled Electric Vehicles (UEV), buys old diesel bin lorries, takes them apart and adds electric technology for an as-new vehicle.
It has not all been easy. Lorenz’s related business, Lunaz, garnered investment from the former footballer David Beckham after converting a classic Rolls-Royce to electric, but it overextended and ended up in administration earlier this year. After restructuring, the company is back taking orders. Lorenz says it can deliver an as-new bin lorry for 10-20% cheaper than the £450,000 for a new lorry. UEV is also looking at converting other vehicles such as airport tow tugs, large mining trucks and buses.
“This does not work with every vehicle class – it’s got to be a high-value vehicle,” says Lorenz.
Nelmes says that several companies have struggled to do conversions at a scale large enough to reduce costs, but that they could make a positive impact.
“This is an expensive thing to do in the UK, and there are regulatory barriers,” Nelmes says. “There is a bit of me that is sceptical. Maybe it will be a niche practice. But equally, if you can find a way to promote standardisation then it could work.”