For the next three years, 2500 drivers who either already drive an electric car on the Uber app, or new drivers who upload an electric car to the platform, will receive a 50 per cent discount on service fees. | Simone Fox Koob ZEV
There’s often a sense of surprise from customers when Uber driver Nathan Merritt arrives to pick them up.
Uber won’t say how many of their drivers are using electric vehicles, but say it’s less than 1 per cent.“We think that the future of transport here is basically two things,” says Uber’s Australia and New Zealand general manager Dom Taylor. “It’s electric, and it’s shared.” Taylor said rideshare companies have a critical role to play in the EV space, given their drivers travel many more kilometres than the average driver.Credit:Uber’s incentive scheme for EV drivers announced on Wednesday has been trialled for the past 12 months, resulting in a quadrupling of the number of electric cars on the platform. The company is keen to address the main barrier identified by their drivers when they are considering buying an EV - the cost.
Uber on average charges a 25 per cent service fee per trip, so rather than charging $5 in service fees for a $20 trip, those driving electric cars will be charged $2.50. Uber driver Nathan Merritt, who runs the popular Tesla Owners Australia page on Facebook, bought his Tesla at the end of 2020, keen to save on fuel. While he says charging infrastructure will need to improve if more EVs are used for rideshare, he believes the money he’s saved on petrol has made it well worth the switch.
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