Li Shufu has a US$15 million dream for Geely’s London black taxis to ply the world’s city streets

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Worker polishing an electric-petrol hybrid version of the London black taxi at the new factory of Zhejiang Geely's London Electric Vehicle Company in Coventry in the British Midlands on 18 May 2018. Photo: SCMP/Eric Ng

Published: 6:45pm, 23 Jun 2018Updated: 8:22pm, 3 Jul 2018

London’s iconic black taxi, rescued from bankruptcy five years ago by China’s largest privately-owned carmaker, now occupies pride of place within the stable of its parent Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, in its three-decade journey from fridge maker to a leader in electric vehicles.

Assembled in a newly built factory five miles from its birthplace in Coventry in the British Midlands, the black cab now rolls off a refurbished plant that churns out 10 times more vehicles than before their takeover. A hybrid petrol-electric version is also being made half a world away in eastern China’s Yiwu, a city in Geely’s home province of Zhejiang.

“If you take this quintessentially London product and turn it into a zero emission, purpose-designed taxi, it can become a transport solution and a contributor to improving air quality in every major city across the globe,” said Chris Gubbey, chief executive of London Electric Vehicle (LEV), the Geely unit that now owns and operates the cab’s production. Geely’s founder Li Shufu wants to “bring the product to the new world and into the new generation,” he said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

Geely’s founder and chairman Li Shufu during a meeting in Brussels on 23 February 2018. Photo: AFP

The black cab can trace its history to the horse-drawn carriages of the 1650s. Its unique design, standardised in 1906, required enough head room for a passenger wearing a bowler hat, and a vehicle turning circle of 25 feet (8 metres) to navigate the Savoy Hotel’s entrance roundabout.

It’s the centrepiece in Geely’s portfolio comprising Volvo Cars of Sweden, Proton of Malaysia, and a 9.7 per cent stake in Germany’s Daimler. It’s a litmus test for Geely’s ambition to lead the world in electric vehicles, where Li – who started his career making refrigerators in 1986 before he assembled his first car, a Mercedes lookalike minicar in 2002 – promised in February that electric vehicles would make up 90 per cent of his company’s sales by 2020.