Since September 3, Uber and Wayve have been operating a small number of self-driving cars in London. Passengers can travel in electric Ford Mustang Mach-Es equipped with Wayve’s AI driving system. For now, these are supervised autonomous journeys: a trained, TfL-licensed private-hire driver remains in the vehicle to monitor the system and intervene if necessary — which, incidentally, seems to defeat the point of a driverless vehicle. The initial service operates across the capital, excluding airports, and is being expanded gradually.

The UK government forecasts a self-driving market worth up to £42 billion, creating up to 38,000 jobs by 2035. These are UK-wide projections, not a guarantee that London will gain equivalent employment. The more immediate risk is that the distinctive, human-driven black-cab trade will be squeezed, accelerating a decline that has already seen the number of licensed taxi drivers fall from more than 25,000 in the mid-2010s to around 16,000 in 2025/26.

All of this rests on a professional qualification that is unusually demanding by international standards. To become a licensed London taxi driver, candidates must pass the Knowledge of London: an in-depth study of around 320 set routes, roughly 25,000 streets and thousands of examinable points of interest within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. Although the current examinable list is seemingly closer to 6,000 points than the traditional figure of 20,000 often quoted, the process nevertheless takes around three years on average and involves notoriously rigorous oral examinations.

In addition, drivers must meet strict character, medical and driving standards, undergo enhanced DBS checks, complete safeguarding training and pass the Safety, Equality and Regulatory Understanding (SERU) assessment. They must also take a taxi-specific driving test. This is not a job one can enter after a short course; it is a profession built on mastery of the city.

That mastery matters. In many countries, taking a taxi can be not only unpleasant but genuinely risky. I have personal memories of this, most recently in Kazakhstan in the middle of the night: an aggressive driver and the distinct feeling that my safety hung by a thread. London’s black cabs are different. They are licensed, insured and wheelchair-accessible, and driven by people who have demonstrated over years that they know the city and are accountable for the service they provide.

This, however, is not only a jobs issue. It also touches London’s tourism economy. In 2024, international visitors made about 20.9 million visits to London and spent an estimated £17.3 billion there. The black cabs’ contribution is not separately quantified, but their role in providing comfort, accessibility, late-night travel and support for luggage-heavy journeys contributes to visitor mobility.

London without its black cabs, many of us would argue, would be as incomplete as London without its red buses, decommissioned red telephone boxes, Big Ben — or even the rain. These are not merely clichés; they are part of the visual and experiential grammar of the city. Black cabs are part of that grammar. They appear in films, photographs, paintings and tourists’ memories as unmistakably “London”.

Artists have long used London’s transport system as visual shorthand for the city. Modern artists, including Edward McKnight Kauffer, Man Ray, Graham Sutherland, Richard McNeil and Paul Nash among others, similarly helped establish London’s buses and transport network as powerful cultural symbols. Today, contemporary painters continue to use red buses and black cabs as shorthand for “London”.

Climate change is already changing London’s image, with less rain and, consequently, fewer umbrellas. If we also allow the black cab to fade, we are effectively editing another line from London’s story. Some might then suggest replacing Big Ben with a generic digital clock, repainting the buses in neutral colours and removing the top deck, or getting rid of red telephone boxes because they are inefficient — the latter now, fortunately, protected, and rightly so.

Efficiency, I would argue, has its place. But so does identity.

The question is not simply whether technology can get someone from A to B. It is whether we are willing to preserve a system that makes not only our journeys safer, but London itself the iconic city that millions of people around the world admire.

So, personally, no: I will not take driverless taxis. Because a London without black cabs would no longer be quite the London I love.

* Christian de Vartavan is an eminent scholar and now CEO of a London blockchain consulting company and Associate, APPG AI, House of Lords.