The team at Jalopnik recently encountered a Tesla Cybercab prototype in traffic and delivered the kind of clear-eyed automotive analysis we expect from that iconic masthead: “This Looks Like Poop From A Butt.”
After reviewing the footage, you know what y’all, you’re not wrong.
But how does Tesla’s gilded boy compare to the LEVC TX, London’s modern plug-in-hybrid black cab? I’m curious because one of these vehicles appears to have been designed by people who have actually ridden in a taxi.
You May Not Like It, But This is What Peak (Taxicab) Performance Looks Like
On one side, we have the international icon whose silhouette screams “TAXI FOR HIRE” without waiting for auto-translate. On the other side, we have Tesla’s best effort at creating a taxi, which for some reason only has 2 seats.
| Specification | Tesla Cybercab | LEVC TX Black Cab |
|---|---|---|
| Where it’s made | Austin, Texas | Coventry, England |
| Parent company | Tesla | China’s Geely Holding |
| Passenger capacity | Up to 2 | Up to 6 |
| Wheelchair accessible | No accessible configuration announced | Yes, with an integrated ramp and forward-facing wheelchair space |
| Powertrain | Battery electric | Range-extended electric/PHEV |
| Electric range | Roughly 280–300 miles estimated | Up to 78 miles |
| Total range | Same as electric range | 333 miles with range extender |
| Turning circle | Not yet published | Just 27.7 feet |
| Driving method | Tesla autonomous driving, planned for no steering wheel or pedals | Licensed human cabbie |
| Panel gaps | Ludicrous Mode | Like a normal, seriously built car |
Hot Take: I Like Having a Human Driver
Don’t count out organic intelligence, it’s capable of some pretty great stuff. London cabbies do not merely know the city. They learn “The Knowledge,” an enormous mental map containing tens of thousands of streets and landmarks.
All that navigation literally changes their brains. A landmark brain-imaging study found that London taxi drivers had larger posterior brain than control subjects, with the difference increasing alongside years spent driving. In other words, their brain has got junk in the trunk, like maps and really colourful swear words.
UK cab driver brains are warped by driving — so much so that you can see it! — but it’s a good thing.
I have driven something like a million miles, mostly in Chicago. My brain has also been warped by driving, but rubbing shoulders (and bumpers) with these @#$%ing idiots, well, let me just say that water finds its own level.
Still, unlike AI driving software, neither I nor the average London cabbie suddenly forgets how to drive after an overnight update. Tesla’s own safety numbers have already shown self-driving safety regressing after the introduction of end-to-end neural networks.
Even the biggest-brained human cabbies occasionally make mistakes. They do not generally hallucinate an extra lane and drive into it, though. Oh right, and humans ought to earn a living, and driving is a fine way to do it.
Two Seats Is The Worst Possible Format for a Taxicab
The Cybercab seats two people… which excludes a lot of very valid taxi use-cases. Two seats means no family with two parents and a child. No group of 3+ friends. No airport party unless everybody arrived alone. Moving six passengers requires three Cybercabs, while one black cab can carry the entire squad.
No driver to ask for local reccs, and room for exactly one friend before the group chat becomes a convoy. The Cybercab is a vehicle purpose-built for the male loneliness epidemic.
At the vehicle level, Tesla’s efficiency is impressive. Its certification paperwork indicates about 165 watt-hours per mile, equivalent to roughly 204 MPGe. That’s outstanding, that is likely the metric that this design is optimizing for.
But, taxis do not exist to deliver cars. Taxis deliver fares, you know, friends and families and their luggage. That’s why you don’t see a lot of medallion-bearing 2-seat roadsters.
Car and Driver estimated the LEVC TX at 80 MPGe combined. At full passenger capacity, that works out to 480 passenger-miles per gallon-equivalent. The Cybercab tops out around 408 passenger-miles per gallon-equivalent.
In other words, the six-seat black cab can be about 18% more energy-efficient per passenger when both vehicles are full, despite the Tesla being dramatically more efficient by itself and the competitor literally burning gasoline. Real-world occupancy will vary, but passenger capacity matters. Especially when the alternative requires building, charging, and operating three entire cars.
British-Built, Chinese-Owned
There is one interesting wrinkle here. LEVC is owned by China’s Geely Holding, which also owns Volvo Cars (who supplies the LEVC TX’s gasoline generator) and has invested more than £1 billion in the company.
The TX is genuinely British-built. Every one has been manufactured at LEVC’s factory in Coventry. But that factory gives a Chinese automaker a valuable manufacturing foothold inside a Western market that may suddenly impose tariffs on directly imported Chinese EVs.
It is not literally a China-made EV sneaking through the back door. It is more like Geely bought the back door, renovated it with tech that European manufacturers seem to be vigorously allergic to, hired local workers, and started building cars on the other side.
And the test drives? Auto reviewers love the LEVC TX, the PHEV’s electric-first drive-train is smooth as an Old Speckled Hen on a hot day. Most folks who ride in a Cybercab love it, too, but so far that’s been on a closed-course at a stage-managed event at Warner Bros in California (so stage-managed that Tesla didn’t even trust the robot bartenders to drive themselves), so watch this space.
Hackney Versus Hack-y
So, that’s tale of the tape.
London built a taxi that needs no introduction: six seats, wheelchair accessibility per the regs, an absurdly tight turning circle, purpose-made for a human driver whose brain has physically adapted to the job. Tesla built an uglier electric Saturn Sky that drives itself and charges fares.
