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Uber is moving beyond its “Uber Green” effort, which allowed preference for both battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and hybrid-electric vehicles. In their latest move, Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO, announced that users could specify only battery-electric vehicles. This decision resulted in his conclusion that the overall trend is toward battery-electric vehicles. If the world truly wants to accomplish its net-zero goals, everyone must push toward this goal, and Uber is stepping up.
EV Mentor: Getting The Drivers On Board
There is a lot of EV misinformation in the market, and Uber has recognized this would be a problem when pushing their drivers, who typically own their cars, towards EVs. So, they are rolling out an EV Mentor program, which provides a resource driven by ChatGPT that will answer questions in a human-like way.
IBM has done some studies with regard to using AI in this fashion and found that AI performs roles like this very well. The quality of AIs like ChatGPT and IBM’s Watson are good enough to make the user feel like they are talking to a real person rather than an AI, which improves engagement (several men in the IBM trial started flirting with the AI). This service helps these drivers understand the benefits of buying a used BEV over a gas car. Currently, there are several advantages, including the fact that EVs drop in value a lot during the first couple of years, making them one of the most vital car values in the market.
Part of this effort is partnering with power companies to install more BEV chargers, which will be needed to ensure the success of this BEV pivot inside Uber.
Building EV Advocacy
This effort should create a significant number of well-informed BEV advocates. Markets tend to move on advocacy, so the more capable advocates Uber creates, the more quickly the overall market is likely to accept and move to BEVs. In addition, the trained-up OpenAI service could be used to inform other car buyers, not just Uber car drivers, further increasing this advocacy.
As a result, it may be that the advocacy for BEVs that Uber creates will have a far more significant positive impact on this move to BEVs than it otherwise might because, as big as Uber is, they don’t constitute the majority of current gas car drivers. However, advocates can move mountains, and the number of drivers Uber has, estimated at over 7M, makes for a robust foundation of advocates if a major portion of these drivers use this Uber AI tool and become BEV advocates. This could end up becoming one of the most significant moves towards moving from gas to BEV vehicles yet.
Environmental Impact
It is estimated that around 25% of harmful emissions come from people, with much of that originating from the cars people drive. If we can shift much of this activity to lower-emission alternatives like BEVs, we can significantly reduce the human-generated pollution driving climate change. Gas cars driving in traffic tend to be particularly inefficient given their tendency to idle or constantly start their engines, both of which increase the amount of pollution they put out over a given distance.
Uber’s goal is to eliminate emissions by 2040, and this move to shift the automotive mix in their service to far more BEVs should significantly contribute to achieving that goal.
Wrapping Up:
Uber’s move to turn a significant number of its drivers into BEV advocates is inspired. It should significantly impact the BEV trend being driven by most governments to reverse global climate change before it is too late.
This effort is helped significantly by the value that BEVs represent when used, which offsets the efforts by the Petrochemical industry to stop or reverse the movement of electric vehicles.
In short, Uber is doing well here, and this effort should benefit the world and Uber’s image and brand.
Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery development. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.
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