
Electrifying our network - Markusj1
https://www.uber.com/newsroom/electrifying-our-network/
======
koolba
Link to the actual program: [https://www.uber.com/newsroom/electrifying-our-
network/](https://www.uber.com/newsroom/electrifying-our-network/)

From _that_ article:

> Many drivers know about the federal tax credit for EV owners, but there are
> a myriad of State programs and incentives available as well as local
> programs provided by utilities and cities that are less widely known ...
> [truncated] ... In select cities, this pilot provides direct monetary
> incentives for driving EVs on our network.

My read of it is that they're not actually providing much in direct
incentives. Instead this is meant to educate their drivers and navigate them
towards existing incentive programs at the local, State, or Federal level.

~~~
sctb
Thanks. We've updated the link from [https://www.techradar.com/news/uber-is-
paying-its-drivers-to...](https://www.techradar.com/news/uber-is-paying-its-
drivers-to-go-fully-electric) to this, which seems to have more information.

------
thinkcontext
Lyft purchases carbon offsets for all their rides. Don't know if they
incentivize electric vehicles but it would make sense for them to do so at
least as much as it costs them to offset conventional emissions.

[https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/all-lyft-rides-are-now-
carbon...](https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/all-lyft-rides-are-now-carbon-
neutral-55693af04f36)

~~~
bontaq
Huh, I didn't know this. I'm surprised they didn't advertise it harder, it
just makes me like them all the more.

------
madengr
I don't see how this is economical for a full time driver. Maybe a Bolt would
have the range to make enough money between charges. Driving a (presently
available) Tesla for Uber would be a crazy money loss. No way a Leaf could do
it (I drive one daily), even with the quick charge port.

So a Bolt is probably $35k, and you are supposed to drive that full time, with
time out between charges, and still make enough money to pay that off and make
a living?

I suppose you could cheat and use a Volt. It's electric, but can run 100% off
gasoline.

Of course it just reiterates the point that Uber and Lyft were never supposed
to be full time, rather a way to quickly make a buck by sharing a ride.

Until used EVs with 200+ mile range are widely available, I just don't see it
being economical. Of course Uber will sucker you into leasing an EV, where you
net pay after expense will probably be $3/hr.

~~~
Brakenshire
It depends where you are. Taxi drivers in London average only 100 miles a day,
and in fact all new black cabs are already required to be electric with a
range extender.

If Uber design into their system a bias for shorter, central journeys going to
electric cars, and longer journeys going to petrol or diesel cars, it’s
definitely doable.

The new Leaf has a range of 150 miles, which is borderline. You could do it
with an i3 with range extender, or with the model 3.

~~~
UncleEntity
> If Uber design into their system a bias for shorter, central journeys going
> to electric cars, and longer journeys going to petrol or diesel cars, it’s
> definitely doable.

A bunch of short fares absolutely kills your day between the wait time and
deadhead miles between trips.

Figure you can do three or four $7 trips in the same time you can do one $60
trip.

------
Scoundreller
I regretfully admit i’ve never sat in a fully electric car.

I wish I could pay a little more to get an Uber Green, but I think that’s only
in France.

~~~
fooblitzky
I tried a BMW i3 using ReachNow in Seattle. It was kinda weird - silent, and
decelerated every time you lifted your foot off the gas (electricity?) pedal,
you had to hold it down slightly to coast. But once I got used to it I found
it a lot of fun to drive, and the interior had a slight spaceship feel. I
thought it would make an excellent choice for commuting.

I'd switch to an EV, but unfortunately I live in an apartment and the garage
doesn't provide chargers :(

~~~
paxy
> decelerated every time you lifted your foot off the gas (electricity?) pedal

This can be configured on Teslas (and maybe others)

~~~
madengr
The Leaf has a B mode for enhanced regen. Lift off the pedal on the highway
and it deaccelerates pretty well.

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cozzyd
Random uninformed prediction: Uber Green is coming soon. Pay a premium for
good conscience (so you can justify using low-occupancy vehicles instead of
public transit).

~~~
rawrmaan
This is my #1 most desired feature on Uber and Lyft.

~~~
saudioger
Take a bus

~~~
mac01021
Even in that doubles the travel time and you have to switch buses twice before
arriving at your destination?

It's not irrational to want to reduce one's environmental impact without
bearing that level of inconvenience, even if one could reduce it to a greater
extent by spending the extra time.

~~~
saudioger
It's well argued that you're not significantly reducing your environmental
impact by buying an electric car.

There are literally millions of used cars that will ultimately be less harmful
over their lifespans than increasing the demand for new vehicles. You can't
only take into consideration mileage, but must also consider the environmental
cost of production, logistics, and electricity generation.

If you're going to whittle that argument down further by saying you _want_ a
new car anyway, or you're drawn to reduced maintenance/fuel costs... you might
as well admit that you don't actually care about the environment and just want
a cool car (I won't knock that, but don't pretend that virtue is your
motivation).

~~~
mac01021
I agree with everything you just said (and even on principle will only ever
buy a used car) -

except we're not talking about buying a new car. We're talking about using
uber/lyft.

If that uber driver is does uber-driving full time, and they charge their car
using a suitably green power source, then the electric car might be seeing
enough use/mileage that the emissions savings make a net win after a year or
so on the road.

Maybe uber-consisting-of-only-cars-at-least-10-years-old would still be
better. But you're never going to get uber to implement that.

And of course taking the bus is better, but sometimes extremely inconvenient
(for some definition of "extremely".

\----------------------------------

Separate line of thought - I have in the past reasoned thus:

In the year 2025, millions of new cars will be produced and sold. There is
nothing that a couple of curmudgeons like you and I can do about that. But the
fraction of those cars that are electric vs petroleum-powered is going to
depend on the number of people who by electric cars between now and then.
Consumer behavior does influence the set of products that vendors make
available to consume in subsequent months and years. So maybe these brand-new-
electric-car-buyers are actually helping in an indirect (and impractical-to-
quantify) way.

------
tambourine_man
On form, not content: it baffles me that companies the size of Uber can’t code
a responsive site, or test it on a handful of devices. Google is usually
guilty of this as well.

Content is larger then viewport on iPhone SE

~~~
dingo_bat
Looks fine on my Galaxy S7. Maybe they set a minimum size. IPhone Se has only
20% of the pixels in a modern phone screen.

~~~
tambourine_man
I believe we disagree on the definition of modern.

Smaller size is a feature to me. I find the jugglery people need to perform I
order to reach all corners of the screen comical.

I think in a few years these large phones will look like the ones used by
Gordon Gekko. They already do to me.

~~~
dingo_bat
> Smaller size is a feature to me.

I agree. I deferred buying the S9+ precisely because it is even bigger than my
S7 edge, which is already stretching the limits of usability. However the SE
errs on the side of "too small" for me. Moreover, the screen is positively
coarse, regardless of the physical size. There aren't enough pixels on it.

~~~
tambourine_man
Pixel density on the SE is 326 ppi. Better than most photo prints and the same
as the iPhone 7 and 8. You need a magnifying glass to see them.

~~~
dingo_bat
I don't think that's correct. I can see the coarse nature of the screen quite
easily and it's highly annoying. In any case, as I said, the size is also too
small to be of much use as a smartphone.

Back to the main point, TFA is responsive to screen size, but there's only so
much you can expect a website to scale. Just like a current website will look
bad on a 8k monitor, it will also look bad on a smart watch screen. I think
the SE screen is physically and logically too small.

~~~
tambourine_man
>I don't think that's correct.

It is:

[https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/specs/](https://www.apple.com/iphone-
se/specs/)
[https://www.apple.com/iphone-7/specs/](https://www.apple.com/iphone-7/specs/)

>I can see the coarse nature of the screen quite easily and it's highly
annoying.

You are probably confusing it with a 3GS or something else. Apple has been
selling “Retina Displays” ever since the iPhone 4. You can't see the pixels in
any such screens at any reasonable viewing distance.

>…the size is also too small to be of much use as a smartphone

That's not a statement of fact. The SE sells very well and not only because of
its price.

>TFA is responsive to screen size, but there's only so much you can expect a
website to scale. Just like a current website will look bad on a 8k monitor,
it will also look bad on a smart watch screen.

That's not how responsive design works, that's just bad design. There's no
technical reason to specify a minimum/maximum size and work within that range.

And that's not what they did either. Their CSS is responsive, they just added
a <table> element (which is notoriously bad on mobile) that can't scale
beneath 334px with current font/padding/border settings. That's just laziness
or ignorance.

------
jedberg
It seems like the biggest issue here is that as an Uber driver, your downtime
for refueling is lost money. With gas, that's a 5 minute downtime. With
electric, it's 30+ minutes.

If they really want this program to take off, they need to partner with some
green partners who will pay the Uber drivers for their charging time.

~~~
aphextron
The marginal cost of operating an EV is _so_ much lower than an ICE car, that
the charge time is more than made up for. The scheduled maintenace for my
Nissan Leaf is essentially “check the fluids and rotate the tires” for the
lifetime of the car. On top of that, the MPG equivalent is >100 mpg and
charging in many places is free. It’s literally an order of magnitude
difference in operating costs.

------
dev_dull
A lot of fluff here without much change honestly. You can schedule rides less
than 30 minutes so you don’t run out of juice but that’s it.

I’d like to see charging discounts or something else to make it economical as
well.

------
Theodores
Meanwhile, in Paris, the electric car sharing scheme comes to an end:

[https://www.thelocal.fr/20180619/wheels-set-to-come-off-
pari...](https://www.thelocal.fr/20180619/wheels-set-to-come-off-paris-
autolib-electric-cars)

There are many factors for why this is so, not making money being the problem.
This is a story that investors in today's EV 'sharing' companies may find
prescient.

~~~
gridspy
Sounds like trusting fellow users is a major factor

"

"They are full of cigarettes, lighters, bottles, bags with rubbish. People
take drugs in the cars." François, an Autolib employee in Paris told France
Info.

One Paris resident told The Local how he and neighbours successfully persuaded
authorities to close their local Autolib station.

"We were sick and tired of the vehicles becoming a temporary home for drug
addicts of all kinds , vagrants and toxico-tourists that roam the night in
search of a place .

"There were piles of junk food , discarded bottles , cigarette butts , and yes
….. used condoms all over the pavement – this is not what you want to step
across as you take the kids to school in the morning.

"

------
moonka
I find it telling that neither this or the linked blog post give specifics on
the amount they are providing. I'm guessing most of the additional costs to go
electric will fall on the driver.

~~~
toomuchtodo
EVs have half the per mile operating costs as an internal combustion vehicle.
This increases EV utilization on the network, incentivizing the deployment of
EVs on Uber’s network by drivers.

You shouldn’t buy an EV solely to drive for Uber, but if you are going to
drive for Uber and have an EV, you should get more rides sent your way.

~~~
sjm-lbm
A lot of the operating cost advantage will disappear when attempting to use an
EV as an Uber vehicle, though. Most EVs cost more than an ICE-powered vehicle
and take longer to "fill up" when at the end of their range - so, for large
portions of a day, you will have a more expensive asset deprecating in a
parking lot as it charges its batteries.

I'm not sure that this is enough to actually make an EV more expensive to
operate than a traditional car as a Uber vehicle, but I do think that it's
worth pointing out that the workload of an Uber vehicle is enough to move a
car out of the operating window that is usually used to support statements
like "EVs have half the per mile operating costs as an internal combustion
vehicle".

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
If the vehicle currently isn't in revenue service then it's not "operating."
If it's not operating, then it's not contributing to operating cost. The time
to recharge the batteries is variable overhead, not operating cost.

I get the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it's valid.

~~~
sjm-lbm
Fixed costs are a component of operating costs. I'm an engineer (at least by
education) so I might have these terms slightly wrong, but I think the correct
way to say this is that EVs have higher fixed costs and lower variable costs -
and both of those are part of operating costs.

FWIW, I'm not representing this as a full analysis, just pointing out that
"EVs are cheaper to operate when driven by someone as a daily driver" doesn't
necessarily mean "EVs are cheaper to operate as an Uber vehicle".

