The well-known black cabs of London will go green for the 2012 Olympics, using hydrogen fuel cells and batteries in a hybrid solution.

According to a source, the hybrid will be able to operate for a full day without refuelling, and can achieve speeds up to 75 mph with better acceleration than standard taxis. The cabs can top up their hydrogen tanks in minutes at central deposits.

“With the price of oil continuing to rise and CO2 emissions increasing, we need to introduce alternatives to the petrol and diesel engine. Fuel cell vehicles offer considerable well-to-wheel emissions savings, and produce no pollution at the tail-pipe. The black cab is an internationally recognised and iconic symbol of London and this partnership is an important part of making low carbon transport a practical and near-term reality. This project is central to our plans to supply zero emissions power systems to the automotive market,” says Henri Winand, Chief Executive Officer at Intelligent Energy, the hydrogen fuel cell developer involved in the project.

Continue reading Black cabs go green

I pulled up at Kings x stn rank, my first job of the day, he had lots of cases, he wanted to put them all in my cab. I told him they wouldn’t fit in and that he needed two cabs, so he made his wife and two kids get out, he just stood there and gave me the two finger gesture, to the amazement of onlookers.

Next on the rank was a woman, she asks me how much to Heathrow I told her around sixty pound depending on which terminal, she just stood there, mouth open, then walked off. What a great start to my day.

Third time lucky not as good as Heathrow, he went to Victoria stn.On my way there at the junction of Gordon sq and Byng pl there’s a cycle track that runs parallel to the main road, you have to stop and check there’s no cycles coming, which I did, so then I pulled up to the main road waited for the last few cars to clear before I turned right. Can you believe my luck about five cycles came along, without stopping to let the traffic pass, awkward as hell, they just continue, drive around the cars, there’s always a mouthy one, it always seems to be the one’s wearing those tight shorts and yellow top.

I was glad to see the back of the day nothing seemed to go right for me. The sky was a murky grey during the early afternoon. I think it must have something to do with the weather why people were so obnoxious.

Be lucky Steve.

Well here we are again, I hope you are all well and earning enough money to keep you going.

The cab failed it,s 6 monthly but only because the garage didn’t do their job properly. I gave them a list of jobs that needed doing and one of those was the luggage door window didn’t work, the person doing the job never read the list and so the cab failed which meant an extra day at home.

My garage have been really great over the 5 years that I have used them so I am not going to slag them off but I do hope that this is just a one off , because it took me a long time to find a garage that I could trust and I don’t want to have to start looking all over again, we will have to wait and see.

The bill ,which included the new front bumper, came to over £1050 so I really do hope that they get rid of the 6 monthly before next year.

Continue reading Back to work, at last!

Hi there everybody, hope you are all well, It,s that time of the year for our first (and hopefully last) 6 monthly check.

We have left the cab at the garage as there are a couple of jobs that need doing and a service as well. We are hoping that the check will go ok and that there are no hidden jobs to bump the costs up.

When we dropped the cab off the lads in the garage told us that the guys at SGS are being very picky and finding fault with most of the cabs that go up, apparently they are as bad if not worse than the old guard at the PCO were. It makes you wonder if they are trying to keep the 6 monthly checks going by finding fault and then telling Boris that he can,t scrap the checks as the condition of the cabs being presented isn,t good enough thus ensuring that they keep us paying out more each year for their services.

I had the bumper replaced at last and the cab looks great again but for how long who knows as the lovely  people who live in our little village are very fond of taking a key to the paintwork every now and then.

I had the air con re-gassed last week and it stopped working again 3 days later. I took the cab back to the air con place and they then had a quick look and told me that the air con rad was leaking and would be between £250 and £350 depending on whether or not they can get the pipe off without breaking it! There is some good news though, they said they wont charge us to re-gas it this time !

Well that will do me for now, I’ll be back next week to let you all know how we get on.

Cheers Del Boy

Steve is always complaining about Bendy Busses in London. Take him to the pub, give him a few beers slip in the bus word and you can take out a book and read for the next few hours while Steve rants away in the background. Occasionally throw in an ‘a-ha’ at strategic points and your good to go.Not being a taxi driver I don’t care about the busses one way or another, unless I’m stuck behind one of course, and then everything annoys me, but think ourselves lucky we don’t have these busses in London.

It never ceases to amaze me The amount of cab drivers not using the ranks correctly

I dropped at Paddington stn the other day, there was a long queue of punters waiting and only a few cabs that included the ones dropping off, so I waited for the last cab to pass me and I slipped in behind him. How easy was that when Bishops bridge feeder rank was full to the brim, the first cab waiting to turn into the station either fell asleep or was not concentrating , I’ve seen this happen several times before.

The one that annoys me is when there’s a long queue of punters waiting, Instead of using the six pick up points , they pick one up at a time. It takes for ever, when I see this I always go to the right hand side which are positions 4 5 and 6, the problem is they don’t always see you so I have to toot my horn, that generally works. The punters are just as bad when it comes to using the ranks.

Continue reading Nice and easy

Hello everybody hope you are all well and managing to keep up with the price of derv, its exciting isn’t it, I mean every time you go to the pumps you can play a game with the kids and try to see who can guess how much it has risen since the last time. The winner gets the prize of going in to pay the nice lady behind the counter, although if it gets much dearer we will have to get securicor to deliver it in one of their armoured vans.

As you can see from the title of this little ramble I have been having trouble with touts again.Anybody that works the times that I do can’t have noticed how many there are out there now, its like an epicidemic. I have even found myself being threatened by one of them when I had the audacity to stop for a girl that had hailed me when he had decided that he wanted to take her to her destination himself. He told me ,after I had got out of the cab to remonstrate with him and he had locked himself back in his nice black people carrier, that i should be ashamed of myself for stealing his work!

Continue reading Touts, touts and more touts. (could also be called where have the TOCU gone?)

Hello there hope you are all doing ok.

Well what have we been doing for the last few weeks. We had a week off and took a few days to move the boat from the boatyard where it was being spruced up a bit and found that we have a fuel leak that we are going to have to sort out this weekend, apart from that it is great.

On the work front I can’t belive the way that fuel is going up in price. When we went away I filled the cab up and it was 114.9p a litre and when I filled up the day I went back to work (10 days later) it was 118.9p! Hopefully it will settle down soon, if not we are thinking that I may work 4 days only per week but make them a lot longer ie 12 - 14 hours each and maybe I’ll take enough money over the 4 days to stay at home on the 5th and thus saving £45 in derv.

I’m glad to see that Boris has been elected mayor, hopefully he will keep his promises and help the trade out a bit, like clapmping down on the touts, I nearly had a fight with 1 the other night in Shaftsbury Ave. A young couple had flagged me down from the other side of the road and as I was trying to get over to them a miniscab pulled alongside and tried to get them in! When I shouted at him he told me to f”%k off and mind my own business. Luckily the couple walked over to me and left him sitting there, good job he wasn’t doing anything illegal like driving down a restricted street or the wonderful CCTV operaters in Camden would have sent him a PCN!!!!!!

Continue reading One back for the good guys!!!!!!!!

Boris did it” Mayor of London” he’s made a lot of cabbies happy or has he we will just have to wait and see. He’s got a lot on his plate, god knows how long before he tackles our mid term safety inspection, the sooner the better. An unnecessary expense to the cab trade. Before I managed to publish this blog he was on L.B.C. radio talking about our mid term safety inspection and he says he will  put the proposals to a consultation we should have an answer in about three months. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

Have you checked how much diesel is creeping up by, a garage I use quite often is probably one of the cheapest around, the Shell garage in Epping new road at120.9 per litre. But it’s still going up a penny a week. Just working on 19 pence a litre 25 litres works out at £114 extra a month. That’s quite a lot even for us cabbies after all we can’t put that cost on our meters and charge it to our punters. I wish.

Continue reading Mayor of London

Going back a while I picked up Harry redknapp and took him home to Hornchurch on the way there we where having a chat and Derek calls me, what a coincident being he is a Big Hammers fan. I can’t remember why Derek called but I told him that Harry was in the back of my cab and do you want to have a chat, he said yes I wouldn’t mind having a few words. So I asked Harry if he wouldn’t mind having a quick chat on the phone, he said no problem. So I passed the phone over to him, I haven’t got a clue what was said but maybe Del boy can fill you in one day.

Be lucky Steve.