Ride-hailing service Uber has announced that more than 50 electric vehicles will be on London’s roads by the end of September thanks to new partnerships with Nissan and Chinese car maker BYD
According to the taxi alternative, ‘top-rated drivers’ have been offered Nissan Leaf and BYD E6 EVs at “great [lease] rates”.
The firm also announced it is planning on introducing an electric vehicle programme to at least one other UK city this autumn with the company expecting to have “hundreds” of fully-electric vehicles on its app next year.
Uber currently operates in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield in the UK.
A three-month study into the programme will also be conducted by the Energy Saving Trust, which will look into the feasibility of running a large number of EVs as private hire vehicles.
The EST said its study will also look into the economics of drivers using EVs and researching how the capacity of London’s current network of electric charging points can support these vehicles.
“People already associate Uber with hybrid cars, but we now want to go a big step further with fully electric cars on the road from today,” said Jo Bertram, regional general manager for Uber in the UK. “We are determined to use technology to help tackle the challenge of air pollution in London and across the UK. Our car-sharing service has already saved more than 1.3 million miles and 231 metric tonnes of CO2. With electric vehicles – and more people sharing their journey and leaving their own cars at home – there’s even more we can do.”
“Of course there are challenges ahead. A bigger roll out of fully electric cars needs a good network of charging points and the economics must add up for drivers too,” she added. “That’s why the three-month study by the Energy Saving Trust is so important. We look forward to seeing the results and sharing the findings with the Government, Transport for London and the mayor.”
Uber recently announced it had partnered with Volvo to develop “next-generation autonomous cars”.
The new vehicles will be developed using Volvo’s current Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), which underpins models such as the XC90 SUV, S90 saloon and V90 estate in the firm’s line-up.
Both companies will work together to develop the vehicle, with the cars being manufactured by Volvo and then purchased by Uber, which will add its own self-developed autonomous driving systems alongside the Swedish car maker.
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