Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Uber is cheaper - until it isn't, when it implements surge pricing. It's a very different model, which makes direct comparisons tricky. The price of a London cab is regulated. Maybe that price is wrong. Uber can take advantage of it, but do you think the London taxi industry is really going to sit back and watch its market disappear without even trying to change price? And the cab driver protests are more rooted…
While they may have spent a long time learning 'The Knowledge' that was in the days before Sat Nav. Like many other things The Knowledge has been superseded by a computer.
Satnav sucks in many cities, though, especially for POIs. When I visit NYC that's one of my bigger complaints about the taxi drivers: they have no idea where anything is, and it takes them forever to try to type things into their gadgets, often with mixed success. And still they always end up in the wrong lanes and end up swerving across traffic at the last minute, because they don't actually know where they're going or how the street layout works. IMO it's shameful that someone could be a taxi driver in a major city and not be able to navigate to prominent landmarks and neighborhoods. That's at least one problem you don't have in London, where the drivers give you confidence that they might have actually been to London before.