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Nissan London Taxi Postponed, Enjoy Your Current Black Cabs

Remember Nissan’s project to offer London a new, more efficient black taxi? The plan might be going back to the drawing board because the thing is interfering with the city’s upcoming emissions rule.
Nissan NV200 London cab 1 photo
Photo: Nissan
The cab Nissan designed is based on the NV200 MPV, which uses a 1.6-liter gasoline-fed engine bolted to a CVT. Sounds economical enough, but the powertrain can not be adapted to be in concordance with the proposed Ultra Low Emission Zone in central London.

Nissan says its cab does considerably better than the current 32 mpg and 233 g/km of CO2 diesel black cabs, but if the zero-emission zones come into effect they need to come up with a rebuilt powertrain. So, until the ULEZ project is confirmed or not, the Nissan NV200 taxi for London has been postponed.

The road so far

The Nissan NV200 already operates as a cab in New York and Barcelona. The odd-looking version here in the pic has been designed by the same team that made the Juke, so it kinda self explanatory. However, instead of a crazy frog face, this NV200 iteration comes with round headlamps and the iconic London cab grille with vertical bars.

Can’t say it’s something beautiful to look at, but at least it has a tiny dose of resemblance with the classic cabs.

There could still be a hope for this to be adopted as London’s next black cab. Nissan also has an electric version, dubbed the e-NV200, which is powered by an 80 kW synchronous electric motor and a 48-module lithium-ion battery pack borrowed from the Leaf.

However, the 10 miles per hour of charging at a regular socket might be a problem for a whole day in stop and go traffic hauling people and using the air conditioning.
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