For some unfathomable reason the developers of Taxi Life has largely neglected the most basic of peripherals used in any driving game, the driving wheel. There is an abysmally small pool of wheels that work with this game, all of them older and less capable.
Most wheel are simply ignored by the game, it can't detect them. So, how can we get around this hurdle?

Emulation...
By using an emulator called X360CE you can trick the game to think your wheel is an Xbox controller. Is it a perfect solution? No, but it does work surprisingly well if you set it up correctly. I have a Moza R5 with the standard ES wheel and got it to work well enough that the game is both playable and enjoyable. I haven't tried any other wheels but this solution should work with any of them.

To get the emulator head over to https://www.x360ce.com/.
At the very top of the page you'll find the download for the program.



Click it to dowload the ZIP file. Extract the EXE file from within and place it wherever on your drives you want it to be.
I highly recommend you rightclick the file and enter properties, then hit the Compatibility tab and enable the program to run as an administrator.

Start up X360CE and you'll be greeted with this screen, though with no settings inputed.



1 - First select the controller you want to edit. In most cases this should be Controller 1.


2 - Click ADD to add a peripheral. A new window listing all of them should appear. Select the one for your wheel and click Add Selected Device. I should appear in a blue line beneath the ADD button. Make sure to check off the "Enable 1 Mapped Device" beneath Controller 1 if it isn't already enabled.


3 - It is very likely that you'll see a small exclamation mark on the Issues tab. This is because your computer don't have the neccessary drivers needed for emulation. Hit the Issues tab and you'll see a button for installing these drivers. The process should be fairly quick, but there is a high likelyhood of the program freezing when it is done (happened to me).
No worries, just hit CTRL-SHIFT-ESC to open task manager and end the process for X360CE, then restart the program. No settings will be lost, and the Issues tab should be clear now.


4 - Time to start mapping some controls.
Click on the right trigger to start binding. It'll light up red. Press down on your accelerator trigger fully, then let go. Then do the same for the left trigger by pressing the brake pedal.
If you press on the pedals you should both see the green makings on the triggers move as well as the numbers to the top left and right change to reflect how far you stomp down on the pedal.


5 - The wheel is bound to the left-right axis on the left stick. To bind click on the left or right of the stick and then turn the wheel all the way on the indicated direction.
Do NOT do the same thing for the other direction. This will for some weird reason cancel the left and right axis out. You just need to map left OR right.


6 - Time to map out all the rest as you see fit. What you map where depend on the wheel you have so I can't help out there except to say you click on the button on the controller image you want to emulate and then the button on your wheel that you feel matches best.
At the end of this guide I'll add a list of the default controller bindings so that you more easily can match it to your wheel if you so wish.



7 - The wheel should work fine in the game now, but it has an annoying deadzone and some sensitivity issues you can't fix ingame, so let's deal with that in this app instead.
Click the Left Thumb tab.

8 - Play with the Anti-Dead Zone slider to negate the ingame deadzone. Around 25% worked perfectly with my wheel.

9 - Cranck the sensitivity to 100% and then enable the Invert box. If you don't do this then the slightest turn of the wheel with make a maximum turn ingame.

10 - Head over to the Force Feedback tab and enamble FFB (upper left checkbox). It is far from perfect, but sort of works. You won't feel the road surface, trackion or engine rumble, but you will notice larger bumps like collitions, hitting the curb or a speedbump.

Finally, click the Save All button in the top right. Remember to do this each time you make a change in X360CE.

Congratulations!
You now have a working wheel when playing Taxi Life. Just make sure you start up X360CE before you start the game and you're golden. You can minimize the app if you want to, just don't close it down.

Extra note:
I experimented a bit with steering angles and found out that 900 degrees worked best for me. smaller angles and the wheel would turn me too fast, larger angles and I didn't turn fast enough to make most corners without having to back up and then go forward again.

These are the bindings set up as default in the game:

Brake - Left Trigger
Accelerate - Right Trigger
Clutch - Right Bumper

Shift Down - X
Shift Up - Y
Handbrake - B
Interact - A

Horn - Left Stick click

Indicator Left - Dpad Left
Indicator Right - Dpad Right
Radial Menu - Dpad Down
Change Camera - Dpad Up

Reset Camera - Right Stick click
Map - Select
Menu - Start

Special modifier - Left Bumper (LB)

Engine on/off - LB + Dpad Up
Cruise Control - LB + Dpad Left
Light Modes - LB + Dpad Right
Tablet Mode Change - LB + Dpad Down

Look Left - LB + Right Stick Left
Look Right - LB + Right Stick Right
Look Back - LB + Right Stick Down
Lean Forward - LB + Right Stick Up