The Booking System Built for One Driver — Not a Fleet

For licensed London cabbies. UK-only. International readers: this post is positioned for the Hackney trade — international content lives elsewhere on the blog.

If you've ever sat on a rank and watched passengers looking at their mobiles waiting for a taxi or PH Vehicle to turn up and take them to where ever, you already know the problem isn't the technology (as everyone is using it). It's who the technology serves.

Every taxi app on the market is built around the same unspoken assumption: the platform is the buyer of the relationship. You, the driver, are the supplier. The customer at the other end of the booking? Theirs. Not yours.

BAT.TAXI is the first booking system built around a different assumption. The licensed driver is the principal. You own the booking infrastructure. You own the customer. You own the data. The platform works for you — not the other way round.

One thing to be clear about up front: BAT.TAXI is pre-book only, with a currently one-hour minimum lead time between booking and pickup (backend-configurable, reducible if/when required). This is by design. The lead time is what lets you actually be there for the customer — either by getting to them yourself or by redirecting to a trusted Co Driver in time to fulfil the job. BAT.TAXI is for the planned work: airports, hospital appointments, business trips, longer journeys, regulars. The rank and the hail and the immediate-hire apps stay as they are — BAT.TAXI sits alongside them.

And one thing about who built it: BAT.TAXI's founder is Peter Schive — a continuously working London cabbie since 2002 and a third-time taxi-tech founder. Peter previously co-founded cab:app Ltd, growing its driver base from 1 (himself) to over 11,000 across the UK and Ireland between 2010 and 2016, and Noirtaxi Ltd — the pre-book-only direct predecessor of the BAT.TAXI model. He built BAT.TAXI for himself and a network of fifteen other London cabbies, who operated the Driver-As-Agent model manually for eighteen months before the platform existed. Every feature in this post came out of real working cabs, real working passengers, and real working overflow between trusted drivers. This isn't software built for the trade — it's software built from inside the trade.

This post walks through what that actually means in practice, what you get on Day 1, and what the £4.99/month version does that no one else is doing.

The taxi-app problem

Here's how the taxi-app industry has worked since ~2011, and how it still works in 2026:

Drivers sign up to a taxi app to get work that bypasses the rank, the hail and the cabbie's own word-of-mouth.
The app owns the customer relationship. The app holds the phone number. The app holds the booking history. The customer's loyalty is to the icon on their phone, not the cabbie at the wheel.
The app takes a commission off every fare — averaging around 29% on the leading UK ride-hail platform per Oxford / Worker Info Exchange research (June 2025), with rates exceeding 50% in some cases.
If a driver stops using the app, the customers they've driven for stay with the app — to be matched algorithmically to whoever's nearest next time.

This isn't a flaw in the taxi apps. It's the point. The apps' business model depends on owning the customer relationship — they can't hand it back to the driver without dismantling the value they extract.

Even HMRC acknowledges the legal asymmetry. Their internal manual (VTAXPER77100) says cab firms can "act as agents for drivers" — which is the legal frame the trade was designed around. The firm (or app) is the agent; the driver is the principal. Except in practice, every taxi app flips it: the app holds the customer relationship, and the driver is treated like a supplier.

What changes when the driver is the principal

BAT.TAXI is built the way the HMRC manual actually describes the relationship. You — the licensed driver — are the principal. The platform is the agent.

Practically, that means:

You invite your own customers. WhatsApp, SMS, email, or a printable QR code in the back of the cab. The customer's relationship is with you. When they need a ride next month, they message you directly.
You set your own fixed price — below the metered fare. That's how Hackney law works: a cabbie's quoted fixed price has to come in at or below what the meter would have charged for the same journey. Quote a job, send it to the customer, get a confirmation. You put the meter on during the journey so the passenger sees exactly what they've saved at your fixed rate. No surge pricing dictated by an algorithm. No 29% commission off the top. Just a known fare, agreed in advance, demonstrably below the metered alternative.
You handle your own bookings. A simple dashboard shows you what's coming in, what's pending, what's confirmed.
You redirect jobs you can't take to a trusted Co Driver — on your terms. Going to a hospital appointment? Asleep? At your daughter's nativity? Your customers don't get a "no driver available" — they get one of your trusted Co Drivers, and the booking still gets done. And it gets done at the price you agreed with your customer — when a job redirects, the original driver's terms are preserved (same fixed price, same drop-off fee, same conditions), so your customer's experience is identical regardless of which driver actually does the job. No negotiation. No surprise quotes. The trust stays clean.
You can pause new customer invites when your book is full. Most drivers underestimate how quickly word-of-mouth fills a calendar. The pause invite feature lets you stop the inflow without losing the relationship with anyone already on your list.
Your customers can invite their friends and family. Every passenger you onboard becomes a potential top of a referral funnel — and every one of those referrals is added to your customer list.
And the most important feature: customer cascade deletion. If you ever leave BAT.TAXI, your entire customer list goes with you. Not a copy. The originals. We will literally cascade-delete them from the BAT.TAXI system — it's irreversible, so export your records first (keeping them for your licensing authority is your responsibility, not ours). We can prove BAT.TAXI is a tool that builds your business, not a marketplace dressed up as a tool, because the day you walk out, the customers walk out with you.

That last point is worth pausing on. Every other platform on the market has a structural incentive to keep your customers locked in. They make money when you generate fares; they would rather you stayed forever. BAT.TAXI's incentive is the opposite: we make money when the platform earns its monthly £4.99 every month, because you keep finding it useful. The day we stop being useful, you take your business with you. That's a different relationship entirely.

What you actually get on Day 1

No vapourware. Every feature listed below is live in the BAT.TAXI driver dashboard right now:

Quote system. Job comes in, you quote a fixed price, customer confirms. Fixed prices, no surge.
Booking management. Pending → confirmed → completed, all in one place.
Co Driver redirect. Designate trusted drivers in your network. When you can't take a job, redirect it with a tap.
Customer invites (WhatsApp / SMS / email / QR). Pick your channel. Customer is on your list within seconds.
Customer-to-customer invites. Your passengers invite friends and family directly to you.
Pause invites. Stop new sign-ups when you're full without affecting existing customers.
Airport Pricing dashboard feature (Option 1 / Driver Pack only). London Driver Pack drivers list their own airport prices on sign-up — Heathrow, Gatwick, City, Stansted, Luton — and the system prints those prices on the Driver Pack partition sticker and tip-up adverts, plus surfaces them in the dashboard under "Airport Prices". Option 2 (Platform Only) drivers don't have the dedicated Airport Pricing feature because they don't have the printed materials for the prices to appear on — but they can still quote fixed-price airport runs through the general quote system any time.
Message centre. All communication between you and your customers in one inbox.
Show Less / Show More dashboard toggle. Some drivers want the lot on screen. Some want the minimum. You decide.
Information buttons on every function. No manual to read. Tap the info icon, learn what it does.
Rating and feedback system. Two-way. You rate the customer; they rate you and co drivers.
Customer cascade deletion (when you leave). Already covered. The proof point.

There's no enterprise SKU. There's no "ask for a demo to see pricing." You sign up, you're live the same day.

The TfL question

Most cabbies who've thought about taking pre-booked work directly from regulars have hit the same wall: "What about the booking record requirement?"

Fair question. TfL — and most UK licensing authorities — require a proper booking record for every pre-booked job. If you take a fare off WhatsApp or SMS without a record that holds up to inspection, you're risking the badge.

BAT.TAXI's invite system is built for that. When a customer accepts your quote — whether they came in via WhatsApp, SMS, email, or QR code — the system generates a proper booking record. Date, time, pickup, destination, customer, price, all of it. Exportable. Auditable. The way TfL needs it.

This is the structural difference between BAT.TAXI and just running pre-booked work off your personal phone. You get the legal infrastructure to take pre-booked jobs the way licensing wants them taken — without giving up the rank work and hailing work that pays the bills the rest of the day.

What it costs

Two options. No tier creep. No "starter / pro / enterprise" mind game.

Option 1 — Driver Pack (London only): £99 first year — and that £99 includes a free year of the BAT.TAXI platform (worth £39.99, bundled in). From Year 2 the platform renews at £39.99/year. The £99 covers the full Driver Pack: 250 personalised business cards, 3 tip-up-seat adverts, partition stickers, window stickers, business card holder, wipe-dry name board and pen — branded in-cab marketing materials designed to turn every passenger journey into a future booking. The branded materials are why this option is London-only at launch; the printed assets are physical, and we need to be on the ground to deliver them. Option 1 also unlocks the Airport Pricing dashboard feature — drivers list their own airport prices on sign-up, the system prints those prices on the partition sticker and tip-up adverts, and they appear in the dashboard under "Airport Prices". (Watch the longer London Driver Pack video on the homepage for a walkthrough.)

Option 2 — Platform Only (Global): £4.99/month or £39.99/year. Digital-only access to the same platform. Available in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, South Africa, Australia — and more being added.

Both options give you the full BAT.TAXI driver platform. Option 1 just adds the physical kit.

For context: the leading UK ride-hail platform's average take-rate on a fare is around 29%, according to Oxford / Worker Info Exchange research published in June 2025. In some cases, drivers reported the take exceeding 50%. £4.99/month is what BAT.TAXI takes — full stop — no matter how many fares you do. The maths is not subtle.

How to start

Go to bat.taxi/driver-location-selection. Pick your city. Sign up. The whole thing takes about three minutes.

Watch the short overview video on the homepage if you want to see how the dashboard looks before signing up. If you're a London cabbie and you want to see what the Driver Pack physical kit looks like, watch the longer Driver Pack video on the same page.

FAQ

Do I need to be part of a fleet to use BAT.TAXI? No. BAT.TAXI is built for the individual licensed driver. You don't need to belong to a fleet, a firm, or any other business. You bring your licence; we provide the booking infrastructure.

Can I use BAT.TAXI alongside the taxi apps? Yes. BAT.TAXI is an additional channel for direct customer relationships — not a replacement for any platform you choose to keep using. Many drivers run both for a few months while they build their direct customer base, then ramp down app hours as their direct bookings increase.

What happens to my customers if I cancel BAT.TAXI? Customer cascade deletion. Your customer list — every contact, every booking history, every relationship — is deleted from our database when you leave. We don't keep it; we don't sell it; we don't poach. The customers know you, not us. You simply download all records before deleting yourself to keep your records compliant (your job, not ours).

Do I need a separate driver app to download? No. BAT.TAXI is a web-based PWA (Progressive Web App). It works in any modern browser on any phone. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app — but there's nothing to download, update, or run out of storage space.

Is the booking record TfL-compliant for licensed Hackney drivers taking pre-booked jobs? Yes. Every booking generated via the invite system creates a proper booking record with the fields TfL requires for pre-booked work. The record is exportable for licence renewal or any audit. (Rank work and hailing don't need a booking record — this only applies to pre-booked jobs you take direct from regulars.)

What happens if I'm asleep, on holiday, or just not available at the time my customer needs a taxi? As all bookings are pre-booked — and generally speaking with at least 24 hours' notice — you simply redirect the job to a Co Driver by tapping redirect on your driver dashboard. The customer is served; the relationship stays preserved and yours.

How much does it actually cost compared to ride-hail commission? £4.99/month flat, regardless of how many fares you complete. For a driver doing £2,000/month in fares, BAT.TAXI's cost is 0.25% of revenue. The leading UK ride-hail platform's average take is 29% (Oxford, 2025). That's a difference of roughly £580/month staying in your pocket on those numbers.

How far in advance does a customer have to book? Minimum one hour between the booking being made and the pickup time. That lead time is what lets you actually get to the customer — or arrange a Co Driver who can. The lead time is backend-configurable and may reduce as the model matures; one hour is the launch default. Customers know to use the rank, hailing or the immediate-hire apps for anything more last-minute.

Is BAT.TAXI on-demand / immediate hire? No. Pre-book only. The Driver-As-Agent model only works because the cabbie has time to actually be there for their customer — an algorithm-driven scramble for the nearest free driver isn't what we are. For immediate-hire work, use the rank, the hail, or the apps. BAT.TAXI is the planned-work layer.

Has the model actually been tested before the platform launched? Yes. The Driver-As-Agent concept was operated manually for eighteen months before the BAT.TAXI platform existed — real cabbies, real passengers, real bookings handled informally. Driver and passenger feedback was strong on both sides. The platform launching now is the digitalisation of an already-working service, not a hypothesis.

Where can I read more about how customer ownership works for drivers facing driverless cars? Read Waymo Is Coming to London. Here's How Licensed Drivers Stay Irrelevant-Proof — covers the co-existence reality of human drivers and autonomous fleets, and what it means for your customer base.

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