Showing posts with label Taxi Leaks Editorial https://taxileaks.blogspot.com/ July 07. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taxi Leaks Editorial https://taxileaks.blogspot.com/ July 07. Show all posts

Saturday 7 July 2018

London Taxi Maker Geely LEVC, Joins Brexit Chorus

Traditional London black cab maker, the Geely owned London EV Company, has also warned about the impact that a hard Brexit could have on business, with its chairman saying it could dismantle Britain's rejuvenated car industry.

Reuters noted Jaguar Land Rover, the UK's biggest automaker and employer, had said earlier a so-called hard Brexit would cost it GBP1.2bn (US$1.59bn) a year, curtailing its future operations in the UK.

"What we really worry about is if there are big difficulties transporting goods via the [English] Channel, whether it's increased costs, or anything else," LEVC chairman Carl-Peter Forster told Reuters in Berlin at the launch of its electric taxi in Germany.

"Even with no tariffs, lorries could still be stuck at the border for days," he said, highlighting how the industry relied on frictionless supply chains to transport components and assembled vehicles back and forth across the channel.

Chief executive Chris Gubbey told Reuters 33% of LEVC's suppliers are in the UK, another third in Europe and the rest elsewhere worldwide.

Reuters noted LEVC spent GBP300m (US$398m) on a new plant in Ansty near Coventry when it made the shift to electric vehicles, the first new automotive plant to be built in Britain in over a decade.

Forster said "if the wrong decision is made" people should have no illusions about the extent of the impact on Britain's car industry which has been undergoing a revival in terms of manufacturing in recent years.

"You won't see it overnight, it's a process that will take 10-15 years.... It would be madness to wake up in the morning in London and read in the papers that there are virtually no carmakers in Britain, it would be a real shame," he told Reuters.

Forster was speaking as LEVC launched the electric version of the traditional black London taxi cab in Germany, where the market is dominated by Daimler's Mercedes, in which Geely also owns a 10% stake.

LEVC hopes that the electric taxi, which is available in the more typical beige colour of German taxi cabs, will find takers as a debate about clean air and urban mobility rages, Reuters said.

The automaker is close to finalising a deal with also Geely-owned Volvo for sales and servicing in Germany.

Gubbey said LEVC was looking to sell hundreds, rather than thousands, of taxis in Germany and wasn't seeing Brexit having any impact on negotiations with potential customers.

Along with the Netherlands, Norway and now Germany, LEVC is also in negotiations in France and has plans to expand to customers outside of Europe from next year, particularly in the UAE, Australia, Singapore and China, Reuters added.


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Taxi Leaks Withstands Hacking Attempts And Is Back Up And Running

After a couple of days down time... Taxi Leaks, in association with London Taxi Radio are back up and running,


As we posted last week, the Taxi Leaks Blog have been the target of malicious attacks which have made it quite difficult to keep up our standard of posting.

We know where most of these attacks and potential hacking come from, so therefore we have taken measures to secure our place on all social media platforms and in fact have also branched out into other fields....but more about that later.

One of our problems we believe -facing not only us but every driver posting on social media- is allegedly coming from the Twitter police team, currently working away for TfLTPH. Anyone can be "targeted" by Tfl for anything.... but obtaining a clear judgement by their legal teams... is very different.

 Tfl employees (directors, managers, and others) dislike criticism and take offence very easily, so its not surprising they are behind the scenes scheming and plotting.

In Britain, we still live in a society where we can voice our opinions freely and without fear of twisted retribution in the name of a legal definition "fit and proper person" argument and Tfl know only too well a suspension or revocation will attract a legal challenge and scrutiny if only once on this subject delivering judgement surrounding this clear attempt to close down dissent or critique in UK law under the auspice of the rights of freedom of speech law.

I really wouldn't worry too much about what is voiced on social media if it is presented as either a "question" or a "checked and proven fact"

If this principle is adhered to, there is never going to be any chance of Tfl's underhanded involvement as they will have neither any legal argument or right to be in any position to involve themselves as self righteous regulators of taxi driver trade press or social media commentary remembering their (us) clients pay licensing fees into their bank account and the use of our funds to follow a fanciful argument is a dead end argument. 


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