Abstract:

This briefing assesses and summarizes electric vehicle adoption among five of the world’s largest ride-hailing companies i.e. Didi Chuxing (Didi), Grab, Lyft, Ola, and Uber. It discusses company-specific electric vehicle adoption, plans for future growth, and catalogues the unique actions that companies are exploring to promote electric ride-hailing on their platforms. In this briefing, the authors assess the electrification commitments and it is based on the limited publicly available information found in company press releases, announcements, blogs, publications, interviews, and media stories that were published leading up to January 2019. The authors analyze company commitments to electrification based on several metrics, including the number of electric vehicles deployed, public announcements or goals for continued growth, investments in vehicles or their infrastructure, auto industry partnerships to supply electric vehicles, and various other actions to overcome barriers to electric ride-hailing. The authors emphasize that there is high uncertainty on the exact time periods of nearly every data estimate in this report including the number of company vehicles, users, daily trips, electric vehicles, partnerships, and investments. With this briefing, the authors characterize how the major ridehailing companies are approaching electrification in terms of the electric vehicle deployments, stated electrification goals, and the company electric vehicle support pilots and programs underway.