Uber gears up for an EV future

It has drawn up plans to include more EVs in its fleet by tying up with manufacturers, fleet owners and charging stations

- SURAJEET DAS GUPTA

Uber Inc is making a quiet tryst with electric vehicles (EVS). In the next three years, based on its demand projection, the shared mobility aggregator would need 150,000 to 200,000 new vehicles to be boarded on its platform to cater partly to expansion and partly to replacing old vehicles.

But this time, Uber has included a new parameter in its plan. By 2025, 25,000-30,000 cars - 12 to 16 percent of vehicles added - would be EVs. It will replicate this model in two-wheelers, for which it has tied up with Zypp, a D2C start-up, as an electric fleet partner, and in three-wheelers, though availability is still limited with Bajaj Auto being the only major player. The numbers for the latter two would be larger.

But the immediate big bet is in electric cars. Penetration of electric cars is in its infancy (just over 1 percent) and only around 40,000 electric cars were sold last year. Even with the second edition of the subsidies under the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles (FAME 2) schemes, the vehicles are expensive there is no sub-10 lakh product available to push volumes yet. If FAME 2 is withdrawn from next year, EV car prices will go up by ₹1 lakh-2 lakh.

The second problem is the lack of charging stations. So, the exercise is far more complex than what Uber is used to doing when it onboards driver partners with CNG vehicles a well-established system backed by easily available bank finance.