What Will A Future Taxi Look Like?

Technology continuously threatens various industries with revolution. This can sometimes be to the point of elimination. There are numerous examples of technology displacing workers throughout history: the last ten years have seen self-service tills displacing retail cashiers and agricultural technology has eradicated the need for labourers in the rural areas. In light of news originating from Tokyo and Bristol, it seems like the taxi industry could be the next one to go through a rough and potentially revolutionary era of its own.

The biggest companies in the world (despite their closeness to the automotive industry) have invested billions of pounds to establish a leading position in the race of producing the first driverless cars. Baidu, Uber, Google and a crowd of manufacturers of cars count themselves among the parties that are ferociously pushing to put out the initial fleet of road-ready, tried and tested, autonomous vehicles.

It's within this febrile backdrop that a joint project between Hinomaru Kotsu (a taxi company) and ZMP (an autonomous driving technology developer) has borne fruit in the Japanese capital, Tokyo. A self-driving taxi successfully transported several passengers, who had paid a fee, through the city, which made it the first ever trial of its kind. Passengers paid their taxi fares through a smartphone app to keep with the futuristic tone of the whole occasion. The entire occasion presents a peephole into the future potentially awaiting.

Recently, the first electric VTOL aircraft in the United Kindom was built and also flown in Bristol, South West England, which provided another momentary view into the taxi industry future. With hopes to make travel carbon free, a Bristol-based startup that was founded in 2016 called Vertical Aerospace masterminded the project. The startup has aspirations to make intercity routes like Bristol to Liverpool or Sheffield to Liverpool city viable by air taxi.

What does this innovation period mean for the taxi industry future? Is a complete and permanent overhaul in the works? The answer is most likely no, not in the near future. Right now, the dream of autonomous vehicles running the roads continues to be a dream. In fact, a definitive date for the arrival of self-driving cars has not yet reached. For the time being, it seems we are still stuck with regular road transport. With that in mind, if you need travel taxi services in London, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Stansted and surrounding areas, feel free to contact 581 Travel. The travel taxi services that we specialise in include long-distance journeys, airport transfers and seaport for business or domestic users. We are a well-established company and have been operating in the East and West Sussex area since 1985. We operate using a 24/7, pre-booking service. We have a wide variety of vehicles available for our customers from 1 to 16 seaters. This means that we will transport you in comfort and there will be enough room for your luggage.