Nothing beats face-to-face meetings, to spark ideas, drive collaboration and deepen relationships. But getting to and from these meetings can come with an environmental cost.
That’s why we’re now seeing business travellers and their employers demanding more from their transportation providers to help reduce this impact.
When we recently asked business travellers about their views on sustainable transport, for example, almost two thirds (65%) said they thought it was important that they had the option to order ‘green’ vehicles when booking ground transportation. More than half (54%) also wanted to know that their company was tracking carbon emissions.
These expectations are influencing the typical conversations we have with organisations about their employees’ travel arrangements. Where the focus has previously been on providing staff with easier booking and expensing processes, most businesses are now also asking if their employees can be given sustainable travel options.
To meet these requests we offer travellers Uber Electric, a service option that allows business travellers to pick a fully electric vehicle (EV) when they book a trip. This service costs the same as a standard UberX. The long term ambition, however, is to encourage all drivers on the Uber platform to go electric.
As an organisation, we have made meaningful progress in the journey towards becoming a zero-emission mobility platform. Today, Uber is the world’s most widely available platform for zero-emission rides, with drivers adopting EVs up to five times faster than average motorists in the US, Canada and Europe.
We continue to look at ways to help drivers to adopt EVs in the UK – including the provision of grants, discounts when buying selected models and discounted charging rates.
We’ve also invested heavily in resolving blackspots in London’s charging infrastructure – specifically in Newham, Brent and Redbridge. This has helped facilitate greater adoption in the UK’s capital city. Fully electric vehicles are now completing almost 40% of all Uber miles in London.
There is still a long way to go on the road to sustainability. During this time we are taking steps to keep companies abreast of their current carbon impact as a result of Scope 3 emissions.
We do this by providing organisations with a dedicated dashboard that allows them to track emissions from every business travel trip. All business travellers need to do to enable this, is link the business profile on their Uber app to their company’s corporate account. Travellers can also view their estimated CO2 savings – and see what those savings equate to – through the Emissions Savings feature in the Uber app.
Achieving net-zero emissions will not happen overnight, but in the meantime we are doing what we can to encourage sustainable transportation choices. We’re confident that the steps mentioned above will slowly lead to widespread adoption of EVs across our platform.