"The black cab is the most reliable piece of street furniture in London. It has outlasted hansom carriages, two world wars and the rise of Uber. But the trade now faces an opponent it cannot intimidate with a beep of the horn, an artificial intelligence that drives two million miles a week and never has to learn a single street name."
"In a quiet corner of Westminster, just behind Parliament Square, a Jaguar I-Pace is nosing its way around a roundabout choked with tourists. The wheel is turning, the indicators are flicking on and off, the speed is precisely judged. The man in the driver's seat is not driving. Alex Kendall, chief executive of the British self-driving start-up Wayve, has his hands in his lap."
"A few miles east, in a hushed examination room at Transport for London, Steven Fairbrass is sitting his twentieth attempt at the Knowledge of London. He has been studying for eight years. He stumbles on a street name in Portland Place and the examiner, kindly, tells him to come back another day."
"Licensed black cab drivers in London peaked at 25,538 in 2014. By November 2024 the figure had fallen to 16,965, a contraction of more than a third in a decade. Over the same period the number of licensed private hire drivers, Uber, Bolt, Addison Lee and the rest, has grown by 82 per cent, to 107,884."
London’s black cab trade, long viewed as reliable and resilient, is facing competition from artificial intelligence-driven self-driving vehicles. A Wayve Jaguar I-Pace demonstrates precise navigation around tourist-heavy roundabouts while a driver monitors rather than drives. Meanwhile, aspiring taxi drivers still struggle with the Knowledge of London, including repeated attempts to master street names. Licensed black cab driver numbers have fallen sharply since 2014, while private hire driving has expanded rapidly, led by companies such as Uber and Bolt. The resulting loss of fare income and rising cost pressures are intensifying the conflict between traditional regulation and heavily capitalized AI mobility.
Read at Business Matters
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