Taxi Driver Online

£92,000 Edinburgh private hire number plate worth more than Tesla car

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/ ... -1-4904727


Image: Edinburgh Evening News

IN the uber-competitive private hire trade, it can be wise to go the extra mile and make sure you stand out from the crowd.

So when buying two new electric Tesla motors, Capital Cars boss Stephen Rose felt he needed a little extra.

He forked out on £130,000 worth of personalised number plates - one of which, TAX1, is worth more than the car it sits on.

“We see it as a long-term investment,” said Elaine Lamb of Gorgie-based Capital Cars. “People are definitely talking about it and it’s great for business.”

The two plates were picked up at an auction down south - TAX15 for £38,000 and TAX1 for an eye-watering £92,000, including indemnity.

“It’s a bit tongue in cheek as well because we’re a private hire firm rather than taxis,” joked Elaine.

The two Teslas are now available by special request and are already proving a hit with punters.

“They’re really good,” said Elaine. “I’m a real petrol-head but even I’m a convert. They’ve got a range of 250 miles so we’ll be doing tours in them.”

Good to see someone be successful through their own hard work rather than the exploitation of others

I'm sure he asked his drivers if they would rather prefer £250k being spent on ego-inflating vanity plates and vehicles or have a few weeks rent free. 'Sure, it's your money (which we gave you), spend it how you like, we'll continue working long hours for little reward - seeing you spunk our rents on extravagances like this is good for our morale'.

'What's that, rents going up (again), but you're cutting fares to get more business so the extra work will make up for it ?'

Any plate like that would not be allowed down here on a PH.

Oh no no no.

But I bet it's miffed off a few up there.

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IDFIMH

Don't think it should be allowed here either:



Wouldn't be surprised if the numberplate is illegal as well, strictly speaking.

Presumably the number is actually TAX 1 rather than the TAX1 mentioned in the article.

So there has to be a space between the TAX and the 1, which there is by the looks of the photo - obviously it's not unusual for lettering on such plates to be run together to make it look better.

However, I suspect that to disguise the space the first three characters are wider apart than they should be. So instead of TAX 1, it's more like T A X 1 to disguise the space.

In fact I'd be more interested to see how they've displayed the TAX15 plate, or TAX 15, as it presumably should be.

I do hope someone points that out to the council after all wouldn't want him wasting his money

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Two different pieces on the Edinburgh Evening News website about this - obviously they think it's a bit of an issue, but judging by the headlines the paper seems to be taking the side of the 'private hire boss'.

Second piece is pretty predictable comments taken from social media, but have included them (and the all-important headlines) just to get the flavour of the coverage. But have excluded the stuff repeated across the separate articles, marked […].


Killjoy cabbies complain to Edinburgh Council over private hire boss’s £92k number plate


Image: Edinburgh Evening News

KILLJOY cabbies have complained to the council after a cheeky private hire boss bought the number plate TAX1.

The Evening News reported last week how Capital Cars boss Stephen Rose forked out £92,000 for the registration – costing more than the Tesla it sits on.

But now taxi firm bosses have questioned whether the plate breaches regulations by suggesting the car can pick fares up off the street like black cabs.

West End-based City Cabs tweeted: “Breach of licensing conditions. Would love to know why Edinburgh City Council allowed this to happen?”

The firm has written to the council asking whether the plate breaches private hire licence regulations.

They rule out: “the word “cab”, “taxi” or “for hire” or any other word or words which might give the impression that the Licensed Vehicle is available to pick up fares from the street.”

But local authority licensing chiefs said those rules relate to signs on the side of cars rather than registration plates which are issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

[…]

One of Edinburgh’s largest private hire firms, Capital Cars was liquidated five years ago, owing around £300,000 to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

A winding-up order was lodged for the firm over unpaid VAT but the jobs of 25 staff and 350 self-employed drivers were secured after a phoenix company bought the assets of the collapsed firm.

Seven Sevens Cars took control of the private hire firm and retained the trading name.

Licensing sub-committee convener, Councillor Catherine Fullerton, said: “Any private hire car or taxi is required to display its vehicle registration number, issued by DVLA, on plates attached to the vehicle.

“The council has no power to regulate which registration number is used and the conditions of licence are not intended to do that.”


‘Dry your eyes’ - Edinburgh reacts to killjoy cabbies complaining about £92k number plate

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/ ... -1-4908879

[…]

Evening News readers have been reacting to the story on social media.

George Bathgate said: “Back in my taxi driving days, a private hire car was not to have anything stating taxi or for hire.

“As stated in their conditions they are not licensed taxis.”

But Willie Scott responded: “But it doesn’t say Taxi does it? That last character is a number!”

Louise McMahon said: “Dry your eyes & get on with your day, don’t know why they are getting so upset over a bl**dy number plate. More important things in life to get worked up over!!”

Paul Walton said: “I wonder, is there a day (any day would do) that black cab drivers don’t moan about something...”

Raymond Young said: “Have those that have complained ever called a vacuum cleaner a hoover?

“Why do people actually care about this guy’s number plates?”

Kristine Robinson said: “Jealousy.”

Aaron Shirley said: “Pathetic.”

Scott Parker said: “Waiting for the black cabs to moan that private hire cars are painted black too.”

Lisa Brown said: “Personally I prefer black cabs to private hire cars feel safer x.”

The law is the law, the complaining cabbies didn't write the law they just want to see it enforced. Nothing unreasonable about that.

In fact the council are at fault for licensing the car in the first place, and it shouldn't need complaining cabbies to complain. The council should know the law, and they should enforce it.

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IDFIMH

For what it's worth, it seems that City Cabs' complaint is based on the licensing conditions rather than the legislation, although wording very similar:



Of course, maybe the council think that they have more leeway as regards interpreting their own conditions, but can't see how you can read the legislation as excluding DVLA number plates:



By the way, the 1971 Act referred to seems to be about markings on HCs, but which in any case seems to have been repealed, so it's nothing to do with DVLA number plates.

Also, on Twitter someone said:

of course i bet he spends £1000's a year on advertising with them

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Some more photos of the number plates on the Express's website. Not sure what the purpose is of the arrow and blurring in the first photo:

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/ca ... private-uk

its TAX 1 not TAXI ffs

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

But it has the APPEARANCE of being a letter 1, which is the breach of conditions.

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Former taxi driver

Problem with the number 1 on car numberplates is that it looks like the letter I, which is why there's no letter I used on car numberplates:



The 5 here is more obviously a 5 rather than an S, which is why some people often misrepresent the 5 to look like an S, but to be fair they haven't attempted to do that here.

If you look at the numbers used on the council's licene plate, the 1 is more obviously a 1 because it has the stroke descending from top left (although some 1s have a stoke across the bottom, the 1 on the council's plate doesn't ).

On the other hand, the council's plate doesn't show the necessary spacing, so to that degree it's TAX1 and TAX15, rather than TAX 1 and TAX 15.

So the council's plate looks *more* like the t-word because it dispenses with the space and runs all the characters together, while at the same time it looks *less* like the t-word because the 1 is more obviously a 1 rather than the letter I.

Some trivia (if only because there's zero news around at the moment).

When this story first appeared I checked both registrations on the MoT database out of curiosity. Curiously, one has been MoTd, but the other hasn't, although they're both identical in age.

And both a lot less than one year old, so even though taxis and PHVs need an MoT every year from new (as opposed to three years from new for un-plated cars), there seemed no obvious reason why an MoT would have been done in this case.

One possible explanation is that it's something to do with the council's PHV testing regime.

Which got me thinking that the one that *wasn't* MoTd might not have been plated. As some may be aware, Scotland still has an exemption from plating for vehicles used for contract hire. And it's not as difficult to comply with as the now repealed exemption in England was, because it's for 24 hours only, not the seven day exclusive contract that I think was required in England.

So it's quite common for airport transfer and chauffer operations up here not to be plated, and these Teslas look like the kind of vehicles which could take advantage of this. So I thought maybe that they'd plated one (hence the MoT test), but not the other (thus haven't MoTd it).

Of course, as these new photos make clear, both Teslas *are* plated as PHVs, so that's my theory scuppered, so I don't know why one has been MoTd while the other hasn't.

But the main trivia point (yes, I'll get there eventually), is that if the cars had been able to take advantage of the contract hire exemption then this whole debate would be irrelevant, since the ban on the word 'taxi' only applies to plated PHVs, not unplated chauffer drive, or whatever.

Another piece of trivia is that until 10-15 years ago PHVs weren't required to display plates in Edinburgh. Think they had some kind of anonymous window sticker. Which may have been because historically Edinburgh has been a bit more black cabb-ish than most big cities, thus PH numbers were minimal, and there were lots of black cabs on circuits. That changed over the years, and as I recall it the usual issues like PHVs plying for hire eventually meant that plates had to be displayed.

Don't think PHVs in London require plates (just window stickers), but are there any other councils which don't require the display of plates on licensed vehicles? Can't say I've heard of any since Edinburgh introduced them.

Incidentally, not sure if Edinburgh has any exemption from the display of plates and door stickers for executive vehicles, but if there is then obviously the Teslas haven't taken advantage of that.