If you live in California, chances are you’ll be taking many more Uber and Lyft rides in electric vehicles in the years to come. The state’s clean air agency is poised to mandate that nearly all vehicles used by drivers working for carpooling companies must be electric by 2030.
The proposal Announced late last month with a decision to be made next month, the California Air Resources Board would slowly raise mileage standards for carpooling companies by mandating a certain number of annual miles traveled by electric vehicles. The requirements would start with requirements 2% of all kilometers driven annually by sharing businesses with journeys in electric vehicles in 2023, rising to 30% in 2026, then 50% in 2027 and 90% in 2030. This is a step forward compared to last year when CARB considered mandating that 60% of the rhythm miles traveled be electric by 2030.
CARB found that in 2018, ride-sharing vehicles like Uber and Lyft accounted for 1% of the total road passenger car emissions in the state that year. That may not sound like much, but cars are a pretty big deal in California. P.assenger vehicles form a whopping third of the state’s total emissions, for other large ones emit sectors such as livestock and power plants. The move to regulate driving emissions is only part of greater pressure from the state to get a grip on vehicle emissions. In September, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to make all vehicles sold in the state electric by 2035, which is estimated to reduce the state’s total emissions by 35%. Pretty big moves!
While ride-sharing companies have done in the past promoted the carpool options offered by services such as Uber Pool as an environmentally friendly option, one study conducted last year by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that Uber and Lyft journeys produced nearly 70% more emissions than the journeys they supplanted. T.he studied calculated a solo trip in a ride sharing car caused an average of 50% more emissions than if the person had just used their own car, usually because of the shared vehicle that drives back and forth without a passenger before and after the trip. Meanwhile, those pool rides that the companies said were greener actually generated about the same amount of emissions as a normal car ride. And with the pandemic temporarily halting pooling options, it is likely when people use Uber or Lyft the most won’t opt for group rides for the foreseeable future – meaning we’re even more likely to take those emissions-heavy solo rides.
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Maybe I’m feeling the impending revolution in electric vehicles – and maybe a chance for some good PR, given a few difficult years less than flattering press—Uber and Lyft both created great electrical energy promises of their own. B.other companies said last year all trips across the country would be 100% electric by 2030. But Lyft also has claimed to be CO2 neutral because it buys offsets, and has both fought other rules
Another thing regulators may need to keep an eye out for, especially considering the ride services companies’ history of to cut corners and mistreat drivers, for example, these companies choose to roll out their new electric car especially fleets how it stimulates drivers – and whether it will do so fairly. The CARB report admits that the agency “[does] don’t know TNC’s exact strategies [transportation network companies] nor how the TNC business models may evolve in the future.
But the agency said it hoped the lower targets in the early years would help companies to help drivers, especially in lower-income areas, purchase electric vehiclesMeanwhile, Bloomberg Green reported last month that Uber was missing payments it had promised drivers as an incentive to switch to electric vehicles. As we’ve seen before from ride-sharing companies, making promises is easy – keeping those promises is tricky.