Car ride firm Uber says it is expanding its offer of a 50 per cent discount to drivers of electric vehicles after the success of a 12-month long trial in Australia.
The offer of a 50 per cent service reduction fee will be extended to a total of 2,500 EV drivers in Australia and will be in place until mid 2025. Uber currently has 74,000 driver “partners” in Australia, so that many EV drivers would make up around 3.3 per cent of its fleet.
Uber says it will cost an estimated $26 million over the next three years, which seems to be based on annual fee savings of around $3,000 per driver.
Uber could not immediately confirm how many EV drivers it currently had in its fleet, but said the number of EV drivers had risen four-fold since the start of its trial last year.
It says that trial resulted in 378,000 EV trips, 502 tonnes of CO2 saved, and an average saving of $5,500 for each EV drier based on fee and fuel savings. It says EV trips now make up 0.48 per cent of total Uber trips. (Which may mean it has around 500 EV drivers now, but that really depends on data, such as trips made, that we don’t have).
“At Uber we believe the future of transport is shared and electric and we are committed to accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles in Australia,” Dom Taylor, GM Rides, Uber Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement.
“This investment is about providing incentives to help driver partners make the switch to electric, and the results from the past year have been phenomenal.
“So we know this approach is producing results and we also know that driver partners want the program extended. We want to do our bit – we’ve listened to them and have extended this initiative for another three years.”
Uber says Australia lags behind the rest of the world in take-up of electric vehicles with EVs still  representing less than one per cent of the one million cars sold in Australia annually (actually, it was probably close to 2 per cent in 2021).
However, the sales of EVs in 2022 may not grow that much because of supply constraints that have limited the number of electric vehicles arriving in the country.
“We want to work with governments, vehicle manufacturers and key stakeholders in the industry to accelerate the rate of EV adoption across Australia so that together we can create a more sustainable transport future,” Taylor said.
Behyad Jafari, the CEO of the Electric Vehicle Council said more EVs on the road would reduce Australia’s dependence on imported oil.
“What we know is the best way to support people going electric is to take a ride in or drive one. Once you experience the performance of an electric car, there’s no going back,” he said.
“That’s what makes Uber’s initiative so great – not only will it help drivers go electric, but it will provide riders with an opportunity to experience new sustainable innovation.”
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Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.