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Uber pledges to shift to “100 percent” electric vehicles by 2030
You can request an electric car on Uber, but it will cost a little more.
www.theverge.com
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Uber announced Tuesday that “100 percent” of rides will take place in electric vehicles by 2030 in the US, Canada, and Europe, and by 2040 for the rest of the world. But rather than pay drivers directly to trade their gas-burning vehicles for electric ones, the company will impose an extra fee on trips completed in an electric vehicle to incentivize drivers to make the switch.
Starting today, Uber is launching its “Uber Green” surcharge in 15 cities in the US and Canada. For a dollar extra, riders can specifically request a hybrid or electric vehicle. Drivers who use hybrid or electric vehicles to pick up passengers will get an extra 50 cents per ride, while drivers using specifically battery-electric vehicles get another dollar on top of that — for a total of $1.50 extra per ride.
That means trips in hybrid or electric vehicles are about to become slightly more expensive for Uber customers, which Uber sees as a necessary cost to help speed the transition to a zero-emissions fleet. Uber will also spend $800 million of its own money to help “hundreds of thousands of drivers in the US, Canada, and Europe transition to battery EVs by 2025.”
Still, Uber thinks that by using more carrot than stick, it can get better results. For example, drivers won’t be required to drive electric or hybrid vehicles to make money on Uber’s app, even by the target date of 2030. The company believes the shift to zero emissions will be enormous and that more good will come from incentivizing drivers rather than punishing them.
The news comes as talk of requiring ride-hailing companies to use more electric vehicles is gaining traction among many big US cities. It’s also at a time when the view that ride-sharing services are more environmentally friendly than other modes of transportation has been contradicted by a growing body of evidence. Research suggests that the average ride-hailing trip creates about 50 percent more pollution than the average traditional car trip. Even worse, studies show that over half of all ride-hailing trips in major cities are made by people who would have otherwise used cleaner means of transit to get to their destination.
Getting the millions of people who drive for Uber to switch to electric vehicles will arguably be the hardest part of the company’s plan. Uber drivers are classified as independent contractors, and many use their personal cars to drive for not just one but several gig economy companies. In 2018, Uber explored providing cash incentives to some North America-based drivers who switch to electric vehicles, but it never expanded the program beyond the original pilot phase.
Uber says it intends to partner with a variety of stakeholders — including automakers, car rental operators, electric vehicle charging companies, and others — in what is likely to be a massive effort to achieve its ambitious goal of a “fully zero-emissions platform by 2040.”
Uber will work with automakers — General Motors in the US and Canada, and Renault-Nissan in cities in the UK, France, Netherlands, and Portugal — to “extend attractive offers” on electric vehicles to drivers. It will work with car rental company Avis to make EVs more accessible for drivers to rent.
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