LEVC to offset reduction in UK subsidies
In February, the British government announced that it was continuing its subsidy programme for electrified taxis until April 2024. However, from April 2024, it would only pay out up to 6,000 instead of 7,500 pounds.
The PiTG launched in 2017, and the UK government has made more than £50 million (just over €58 million) available to support the purchase of over 9,000 electrified taxis through the programme. The main criterion for the subsidy is that taxis must be able to drive purely electrically, among other things. Plug-in hybrids are therefore also subsidised.
According to the manufacturer’s press release, the new campaign applies to all TX taxi models and “across all finance types offered by LEVC Financial Services.” According to Geely subsidiary LEVC (London Electric Vehicle Company), it has already sold more than 10,000 units of its TXs globally, since the vehicle launched. And in London alone, more than half of the “entire black cab fleet is now zero-emission capable thanks to LEVC’s class-leading electric taxi.”
Meanwhile, LEVC announced early last year that it wants to become a purely electric vehicle manufacturer and “could” have a full range of electric vehicles on the road by 2028. So far, LEVC offers the TX taxi and the VN5 van derived from it. The duo can run purely on electricity, but has a combustion engine as a range extender.
A few weeks later, LEVC gave both models an update, adding more battery capacity and, subsequentially, more electric range. The British manufacturer had also presented a new electric platform, the Space Oriented Architecture (SOA), that would “transform the brand from a high-end taxi manufacturer to a leading provider of e-mobility solutions.”
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