The biggest ride-hailing companies globally are struggling to keep their electric vehicle promises.
In 2020, Uber, the world’s largest ride-hailing company, set a target for all its rides and deliveries to be zero-emission by 2040. As of 2025, only a few hundred thousand out of its 7.1 million drivers have adopted green rides.
Grab, Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing company, is targeting carbon neutrality by 2040. Last year, 7% of all Grab rides and deliveries used low- or zero-emission modes of transport, including electric and hybrid vehicles, cyclists, and walkers.
While Uber, Lyft, and Grab don’t disclose the precise number of EVs in their fleets, each platform has less than 1% EVs globally, research and advisory firm Gartner estimates.
“Even though we have seen immense growth in EV adoption by these companies, it is highly unlikely they will achieve 100% EV adoption in the next decade,” Shivani Palepu, transport tech analyst at Gartner, told Rest of World. Palepu expects the shift to electric to vary “drastically” by region.
That’s not true: electric buses are a great success in Europe. They qualify as ride-hailing and as electric vehicles 🙂
What’s not doing well is the antisocial ride-hailing electric transportation model that requires one huge vehicle per person so that person doesn’t have to sit next to someone else.
Can confirm. Been using EV buses for many years now. They’re great!
And the electric sitting moped taxis are also doing great in Asia
EVs account for almost a tenth of Uber’s miles in the U.S. and Canada, more than 15% in Europe, and as much as 40% in leading cities such as London and Amsterdam.
Funny because I can’t recall the last time I saw a non-EV Uber.
I used to call Uber the “Prius fleet”. These days it’s more of the Tesla fleet though.
At least, in all the places I’ve used Uber anyway. I don’t use it very often though.
It’s a Kia fleet now.
