Uber goes eco-friendly with new initiative

Uber users in Fairfield County and 1,400 cities around North America will now have the ability to specifically request an eco-friendly car, according to a press release.

The program, called Uber Green, allows riders to pay an extra $1 for an electric or hybrid car beginning on Wednesday, and the fee will go towards helping more drivers transition to electric vehicles, the release states.

Neither Uber nor the state DOT was able to provide the number of electric and/or hybrid Uber vehicles in Connecticut, but rideshare expert and former Uber and Lyft driver Harry Campbell, who founded The Rideshare Guy, speculates that it’s

less than 2 to 3 percent of the Uber fleet.

“I interviewed Lyft’s sustainability director on my podcast and he mentioned that electric vehicles made up about 1 percent of their current fleet, so I would imagine that Uber is around that number,” he said.

As of Jan. 1 2020, there were 11,677 electric vehicles (EVs) registered in the state of Connecticut. Greenwich and Stamford had the highest number of registered electric vehicles with 795 and 578 vehicles, respectively.

Uber Green will be available from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the release warns that service may be “limited outside of downtown areas to start.”

The initiative is part of Uber’s plan to invest $800 million in resources “to help hundreds of thousands of drivers in the U.S., Canada and Europe transition to battery EVs by 2025. Uber plans to have 100 percent of rides in U.S. cities powered by EVs by 2030, and to be a fully zero-emission platform by 2040,” the release states.

This is similar to Lyft’s initiative, which also pledges to power its fleet solely with electric vehicles by 2030.

“Both companies have announced bold initiatives to shift to electric vehicles but since drivers are independent contractors, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in order to make that happen,” said Campbell.

“We all have a role to play in protecting our environment, and as the largest mobility platform, it’s our responsibility to aggressively tackle climate change,” Harry Hartfield, Public Affairs Manager for Uber in Connecticut, said in a press release. “The launch of Uber Green, and our commitment to electrifying vehicles on our platform, are important parts of our larger efforts, and we will continue to take bold steps to confront climate change head on.”