London’s biggest minicab firm Addison Lee makes emissions U-turn

Addison Lee’s service centre. ‘We were slightly oversold the dream’ on electric cars, the company said. Photograph: Felix Clay

London’s biggest minicab company has U-turned on plans for all its cars to produce zero emissions this year, blaming a lack of public chargers in the capital.

Addison Lee said it had spent £30m on new Volkswagen Multivans, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which combine a small battery with a polluting internal combustion engine, and admitted that the switch to electric cars had been harder than it had expected.