Uber's Road to Sustainability

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Oct 23

Chris Hook is the Global Sustainability Strategy Lead at Uber.

Earlier this summer, Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, wrote a piece on Uber's corporate blog where he outlined a wide array of product features, partnerships, and initiatives at Uber designed to reduce emissions and waste from their footprint, including pulling Uber Eats into their sustainability roadmap for the first time.

It's an interesting challenge. Famously, Uber doesn't own any cars on the road. The individual drivers do. And with Uber Eats, they don't own the restaurants on their platform or control what choices they may make around packaging and waste. They just dispatch drivers for food delivery. It would be easy for Uber to say that the emissions generated via their platform are not their problem, and yet they've done the opposite.

Uber also has a lot of influence. They're able to use their scale to negotiate better EV rental, lease or purchase rates for drivers or better pricing on compostable packaging for restaurants. They're also a leverage point in introducing new products to people. They estimate that over 30 million riders to date have had a chance to experience riding in an EV via Uber, many of whom did so for the first time.

Many folks tried EVs first by renting one via the partnerships that Uber has formed with leading rental companies and almost universally they enjoyed driving EVs more and it works out economically for them. And some, not all, have really done the math on that. We’re grateful to Chris for joining us and hope you enjoy this conversation.

Have any questions for Chris? He’s spent the last decade working with businesses and institutions on sustainability topics. Join Chris for a special Ask Me Anything session on November 1, 2023 in the MCJ member Slack! Details here.

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Episode recorded on Oct 4, 2023 (Published on Oct 23, 2023)

In this episode, we cover:

[4:20] Chris' background and his journey to working at Uber
[9:00] Uber's sustainability commitments and company culture
[13:20] Challenges of reducing emissions and waste from Uber's platform
[16:45] Uber's efforts to make EV adoption more accessible and affordable for drivers, including partnerships with car manufacturers, rental companies, and financing providers
[25:04] The Uber Green rider experience
[27:17] The importance of charging infrastructure and the need to make it more convenient and affordable for drivers
[33:02] Rider incentives
[35:27] Sustainability efforts for Uber Eats
[29:49] Opportunities for startups to help Uber in their mission

Cody Simms (00:00):
On today's episode of My Climate Journey we have Chris Hook, Global Sustainability Strategy Lead at Uber, and our conversation is about Uber's wide-ranging initiatives to go green across their footprint. Earlier this summer, Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi wrote a piece on Uber's corporate blog entitled "Making it Easy to Go Green". In it he outlined a wide array of product features, partnerships, and initiatives at Uber designed to reduce emissions and waste from their footprint, including pulling Uber Eats into their sustainability roadmap for the first time.
(00:38):
This is an evolution of a strategy that they first announced in 2020 when they committed to being a zero emission mobility platform by 2040. It's an interesting challenge for them. Famously, Uber doesn't own the Ubers on the road. The individual drivers own their own cars. With Uber Eats, they don't own the restaurants on their platform or control what choices they may make around packaging and waste. They just dispatch drivers for food delivery. It would be easy for Uber to say that the emissions generated via their platform are not their problem, and yet they've done the opposite of that.
(01:20):
Uber also has a lot of influence. They're able to use their scale to negotiate better EV rental, lease or purchase rates for drivers or better pricing on compostable packaging for restaurants. They're also a leverage point in introducing new products to people. They estimate that over 30 million riders to date have had a chance to experience riding in an EV via Uber, many of whom did so for the first time. I almost always order Uber Green when I call an Uber. And sometimes I get a hybrid like a Toyota Prius.
(01:53):
But recently I've had quite a few full EVs and I try to ask my driver questions about their experience driving an EV with Uber. How did they obtain the car? How do they charge it? How does it compare to their prior experience driving a gas car? I'm sure I'm annoying, but I love to have those conversations and I can say that a lot of what Chris shares in this episode is pretty backed up by direct driver testimonials. Many folks tried EVs first by renting one via the partnerships that Uber has formed with leading rental companies and almost universally they enjoyed driving EVs more and it works out economically for them. And some, not all, have really done the math on that. I'm grateful to Chris for joining us and I really hope you enjoy this conversation. But before we start, I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (02:45):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (02:47):
And I'm Jason Jacobs and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (02:53):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (02:58):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Hook (03:13):
Thank you for having me.
Cody Simms (03:14):
Chris, I first came across the work that Uber was doing in electrification actually through a startup founder, an entrepreneur, his name is Ashwin Dias. He's the CEO and Co-founder of Presto, which works in the vehicle electrification space. He used to work at Uber, so he was a colleague of yours and he first gave me a preview of some of the stuff Uber was working on quite some time ago. Then I saw this big announcement from you all this past summer and I thought, gosh, we really should have someone from Uber on the pod to explain the work you all are doing across so many facets of your business. Thanks for joining us.
Chris Hook (03:48):
Well, you're very welcome. We're glad to be here. It's been a journey for us the last probably three, four years, I can talk to you a little bit about that. Ashwin was a big part of getting that started. I'm very excited to see what he and the team are up to having left Uber. I'm really keen that we talk about it and talk about the role we think we can play in accelerating this transition.
Cody Simms (04:06):
Well, why don't we start with you? How did you start focusing in on climate and sustainability and how did you find yourself driving this initiative, bad pun, for such an influential company in the mobility space?
Chris Hook (04:20):
I've been doing the sustainability thing for about 10 years. I was a strategy consultant. I didn't always like to admit that in polite company, but I was a strategy consultant when I left university. I, like a lot of people, I started that because I didn't really know where I wanted to focus. It was a great opportunity to do a diversity of thing. It was super interesting, but I got to a point where I was kind of bored of it and I felt like there was more purpose that I could find in my work. At that point, so we're talking about 2014, early 2015, the company I was at, Accenture, had just launched this small team within their strategy practice that was focused on corporate sustainability. It was just in the run up to the Paris Agreement. One of the many things that happened in that process was a recognition that business was not the enemy and the climate transition.
(05:06):
Business had to be a massive enabler of that change. That hadn't always been the case, I think previous to that. And so I was excited because this was an opportunity to work on this problem in a way that wasn't about CSR or foundation kind of activity off to the side of a company, but was at the core of what progressive companies were trying to do. I could bring some of my experience from consulting to bear on a problem that was frankly just a lot more interesting and important. I joined that team. I had no experience in climate, so I feel very fortunate to have been able to learn through that process. I got to work with some great companies. One of my first projects was with Unilever. They've obviously been a real leader in this space for a long time on a corporate level. That was when Paul Polman was in charge and it was a real introduction for me into what it means to take this topic seriously as a profit making company and how you work together sustainability and being a successful business.
(06:02):
So then fast-forward a few years, I'm kind of ready to leave consulting and move on. I don't want to leave sustainability, I want to stick with that. Close friend of mine had joined Uber in London. You might best tell from the accent that I'm from the UK and I'm based in London still. He had just kicked off an initiative to make Uber London the first electric only city, which was a bit of a swing. There wasn't really a plan as to how to do that. It just felt like it was an interesting idea and a cool thing to try and do and was pushing in the direction that they wanted to take the company. And so he got in touch and said, "We just decided to do this. We don't really know how we're going to do it. Would you be interested in coming in and working on it with us?" And so it was a great chance for me to take, so a lot of what I've been doing on the consulting side, which was advisory and I should get my hands dirty and try and do it for real.
Cody Simms (06:49):
This was 2020, was this pre COVID, post COVID?
Chris Hook (06:52):
No, just pre COVID, summer of 2019. That plan launched at the beginning of 2019. I joined in the summer of 2019. Little did I know how disruptive the next couple of years were going to be, but at that point also mass electrification felt like it was right on a tipping point. I was taking a bit of a bet too that this was going to take off and I felt like Uber was a fantastic opportunity to put into practice on what I've been preaching and try and prove that this could be something that works for everybody. There was still this sense, I think, that sustainability was a privilege or it was expensive and I was like, if we can get every Uber driver to switch over their vehicle, it's a massive proof point that this is possible for everybody. Because these guys rely on their car for their living. They drive it a lot. They drive in dense urban environments. There's a whole bunch of reasons why it's not easy to do that. If they can do it, everybody can do it. That's what I did.
(07:46):
I joined, I ran that program in London for a couple of years, a little bit of pandemic disruption in the middle, and as I got involved, I realized there was a huge opportunity to do this everywhere. And so I started collaborating with teams across the world and that led to us making a bunch of commitments in 2020, which we'll talk about, and spun up from there. I now think about that globally, how do we get ourselves to a position across all 70 countries that we operate in, both businesses, to net-zero footing as quickly as possible.
Cody Simms (08:13):
You joined obviously after Dara took over as CEO in 2017. This question may not be something you can fully answer, but it feels like Uber has really undergone a transition from being almost like the bad boys of tech and just go out and crush everything in your way to this company that is really leading and leaning forward on sustainability, climate, ESG, accountability. The amount of reports that you all are putting out, self-reflecting and analyzing on your impact, it's pretty astounding really. I'm interested on how you have perceived that cultural direction in terms of where it's coming from in the company and how it plays out inside the company culture.
Chris Hook (08:59):
So I think it is a big shift. I wasn't here to see some of that first version of Uber that you described, but there's a very conscious shift that's happened internally and I think the leadership has a large role in that, specifically on the sustainability side. We said right from the beginning this was going to be something we were going to do transparently. We were going to report on our progress, we were going to try and bring people along this journey and we have this mission statement to reimagine the way the world moves for the better. I use that all the time to talk about why the work we're doing to get people into zero emissions vehicles is the for the better part of that reimagining and that we should take it really seriously. I think there's been a kind of embracing of the responsibility that comes with being a big player.
(09:43):
There's a lot of people who rely on this company to earn a living. There's a much bigger number of people who rely on this company to get to where they need to be, get the stuff they need. We have a big footprint in the climate space and we've got to own that and think about how to move it forward. There's an exciting opportunity to combine that responsibility with the innovation that I think we've always been famous for and try and embrace being at the forefront. It's certainly a culture that permeates. I've been super impressed by the extent to which people really take that responsibility seriously and I think also see the opportunity to drive the change. That's the thing that's consistent through the old versions of Uber is this kind of belief that things can be really different, you just got to push together. I think applying that mindset to a problem like this is a really powerful combination.
Cody Simms (10:28):
So let's look at some of the big milestones that you all have set. On your main sustainability page you have this timeline laid out that sets some pretty clear KPIs.
Chris Hook (10:38):
I think about that timeline a lot.
Cody Simms (10:40):
You're laying it out there. I think you have a goal of, what is it, by 2025, which isn't too far from now that you'll have hundreds of thousands of drivers transition to EVs; And 50% of kilometers in EVs in key European cities, again, two years from now; And 80% of restaurant orders with Uber Eats across Europe and APAC transitioned away from single use plastics to reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging options. Then by 2030 that you're a zero emissions mobility platform in the US, Canada and European cities and a hundred percent of Uber Eats restaurant merchants have transitioned to these reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging options. Then the big one, obviously by 2040, like you said, that the entire platform is zero emissions or micromobility or public transport, that you're basically not running internal combustion engine vehicles anywhere on the platform.
Chris Hook (11:37):
Setting out that timetable is really important because we want to have an endpoint in mind. We want to have an endpoint that we felt was realistic but ambitious and we've been through the process with groups like Science-based Targets Institute and others to make sure that what we're saying we want to do, we can do, and is in line with climate science, et cetera. But 2040 is also a really long way in the future and it's especially a long way in the future for a company that is only 14 years old. We also felt it was super important to have some milestones and recognize that different parts of the world and different parts of our business can probably move at different speeds. The extent to which the UK where I'm based, or the US or France or other these markets, is ready to electrify is very different to the extent to which our business in India or our business in Brazil or Mexico are ready to electrify.
(12:26):
And so rather than run everything on the same timetable, we wanted to create some milestones for ourselves as an urgency for ourselves and then report against that. On the Uber Eats side of the business, which we announced this year, we wanted to recognize that we had a dual challenge. We had a challenge around the vehicle in which your stuff turns up and getting that to zero emissions footing, but also the packaging that appears, and we think there's an important parallel timetable in which we can make that switchover happen. That's going to be a lot of partnership with restaurants and the people who are providing this food or other goods through our platform.
Cody Simms (13:00):
I saw somewhere on one of your websites on that note that said that each year, 11 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans and consumer takeout is actually the single largest share of that waste. Like you said, it's a dual challenge on the Uber Eats side and presumably a quite important one,
Chris Hook (13:19):
On both that and the emissions. We're a marketplace business, and so we can't do that just through our own operations. My job is not a procurement job. I'm not there, going to go and buy a recyclable packaging or buy a whole bunch of electric vehicles. It means partnership and it means partnership right through the value chain. On the packaging side, it means the people who are making that stuff, people who are using it to ship their food. Big companies who we partner with, Starbucks, et cetera, but also loads and loads of small, medium-sized businesses and trying to make sure that we can help those companies access these kind of sustainable alternatives and then ensure that the consumer, that becomes the norm for them.
(14:02):
Take out food as a big contributor to plastic pollution and waste around the world. The miles that are driven for things like private high vehicles and delivery vehicles in city centers have a big footprint too. We have that responsibility across our business, but it's a little different, I guess, to a company which has a big operational footprint of their own and they're trying to transition it. A lot of it's about working with others or persuading others and then making it economically sensible for people to make that switch.
Cody Simms (14:29):
Let's dive in on that topic, on the topic of marketplace as it relates to the most obvious product you have, which is cars on the road. Famously, the cars on the road that are Uber cars are not, for the most part, owned by Uber. What does it look like to transition that footprint to electric? How do you actually help drivers make that shift and what are the mechanisms that you all are able to put in play to do that?
Chris Hook (14:56):
We've got about 60,000 EVs operating in any given month at the moment. We've grown out a lot over the last couple of years. About 1 in 20 of the miles in North America are done an electric car about 1 in 10 in Europe, and where I'm based in London, it's about 1 in 5. We've got to that point because we've tried to think about what are the things that stand in the way of someone getting an EV today and using it to be a driver on the Uber platform, and then how do we start to pull down those barriers? And so broadly speaking, they bent a few buckets. EVs are expensive, EVs are hard to get ahold of, EVs are difficult to charge and a lot of people don't really know anything about EVs because it's not something they've really experienced before.
(15:39):
So if we can go after each of those in turn and think about ways in which we can move that needle so that it makes sense for me, if I'm signing up either for the first time or I'm changing my car to make the EV the next option, then we're doing our job. The sort of latent enthusiasm there is high. When we talk to drivers, people are like, "Yeah, this is the future. These cars are nice to drive. I would love to get a Tesla." I'm in San Francisco at the moment on my way to the airport. Earlier in the week I was in an EV. The driver was super enthusiastic about this opportunity to drive this cool car. His kids loved him taking them to school in it. There's a lot of underlying enthusiasm, but you've got to make it work in reality.
(16:16):
And so that means partnerships with big car manufacturers or rental companies. You might have seen we did a big tie up with Hertz here in the US to make EVs available on rental at a price point that makes sense. Then it means think about things like infrastructure. How do I get hold of these? How do I ensure I can charge these vehicles? And how do we try and encourage infrastructure to be built across cities such that it doesn't change the day-to-day behavior too much to switch from a petrol vehicle to an electric vehicle.
Cody Simms (16:45):
Let's click into each of those a little bit. An Uber driver today, I think of an Uber driver typically as someone who has a car that they own and that they're going to use it to employ themselves and make some money, but that's probably a simplistic view of the Uber economy, in that there are large fleets, there are people who may or may not directly own their car today, et cetera. Maybe walk us through the landscape of what the Uber driver typical relationship is with their vehicle. You mentioned things like renting a car from Hertz. To me, I would question how is a driver coming out ahead on driving if they're having to pay a rental fee, for example, on the car itself? Is that a normal thing that the driver may not actually own the car that they're driving? Anyway, break down that sort of relationship between car and driver.
Chris Hook (17:33):
It's a pretty diverse landscape, as you can imagine. We've got a big number of people driving and so there's every option you can imagine. In broad terms you can think of it in three groups. There's the group you described, people who own their vehicle and drive on Uber, and that can vary a lot in terms of the extent to which that's a full-time occupation. Obviously it's flexible for everybody, but you can do it for an hour a week or you can do it for 35 hours a week. That really depends on what else you're doing. That group of people tend to keep their cars for quite a long time because once you own a car it makes sense to keep it for as long as you can. But we see some adoption of EVs for those folks for sure. That is partly driven by the market just adopting EVs and partly for us trying to offer discounts, et cetera on those vehicles.
(18:17):
You then have a decent sized group who are either financing their vehicle in some way. There might be a car loan, it might be a payment plan, might be directly with a bank, might be through a specialist vehicle finance provider. Then you have a group of people who are renting. Renting tends to be a good option for people who are quite new to the job. You're not necessarily sure this is something you're going to do for the long term, like the up front investment in buying a car is quite high. We see a lot of people start off in that rental space and then there's a lot of people in the middle who are financing their vehicle. It can also depend on whether some people are using their personal car to also do Uber trips. Some people are running a car specifically to do Uber, particularly if they're doing it quite a full-time way.
(18:58):
And so my job is to think about all of those and to think about what are the things that can move the needle to make it obvious as a driver that when you make your choice, the EV option is better. That, broadly speaking, means more affordable because as you just sort of referenced there with the rental, everybody's ultimately doing the maths on how much can I make in a week, how much is it going to cost me and how do I maximize that difference? You can very much definitely make enough money to cover the rental payments as long as we've done the work to ensure that the deal makes sense and it covers everything you need to cover and that in my world, the EV option is the best option for you.
(19:36):
That's a little bit about us working with those companies to leverage our scale because if I'm an individual going to Hertz, I'm not necessarily going to get the same deal as if we can go as a whole organization and say, "Okay, well this is the level of demand that we're expecting to see across the country or even across the world." That can really help. And then it's also thinking about how we do things that ensure that drivers are earning as much money as possible in those vehicles. For example, about 200 places in the world we have this product called Uber Green. Uber Green is an option that as a consumer you can decide that rather than get picked up by any car, you want to get picked up by an EV, or in some places EV or a hybrid. That's great for the drivers of those cars because it kind of funnels particular demand.
Cody Simms (20:19):
I have an Uber Green reservation for later today, so there you go.
Chris Hook (20:22):
This is absolutely fantastic. Okay, great. That's exactly what I want to hear. Well, as a host of this podcast, I would hope and expect that was happening, but that's great to hear. Okay, fantastic. For that driver, that's earnings for them. We can put incentives into the market, we can try and ensure that those trips make particular sense for drivers, and hopefully that flywheel really helps. I don't know if I covered it all there. It's quite a complicated landscape. You've got to meet people where they are, I think. It would be impossible for me to say, "Oh, sorry. You used to own your car, but now the only option is rental." We have to offer that into that whole spectrum, we've just got to make it make sense in as many use cases as possible.
Yin Lu (20:56):
Hey everyone, I'm Yin, a partner at MCJ Collective, here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which is born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. Each week we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change.
(21:22):
Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming, like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more. Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (21:57):
On the car acquisition fronts, it looks like you put different programs in place including, we talked about Hertz as a rental option where you can get better rates than the general public. Looks like you have a partnership with a group called TrueCar that can give you a discount when you buy an EV, gives you basically cash back on an EV. And then you have sort of a financing or leasing partnership. Looks like you have a company called Hive and a company called Zevi, maybe it's pronounced, that can either provide better financing options on payment terms or better lease options than maybe you would be able to get as a general consumer. All of these are sort of funneling more cars into Uber drivers, or making it easier for them to qualify for terms is probably the right way?
Chris Hook (22:41):
That's right. Then in other parts of the world we have relationships with fleets who are buying vehicles at scale and then having drivers come and operate those on the platform. We have as many partnerships as we possibly can manage working directly with the manufacturers but also with, you just mentioned a few of them there, but a whole ecosystem of people who are in the middle of that trying to make sure it makes sense for Uber drivers and other commercial drivers.
Cody Simms (23:05):
It seems like it's early, but working. I saw a stat that said that EV drivers on Uber basically have helped become early adopters in that Uber drivers are going electric 5x faster than the general public. You're on the cutting edge of pushing people to electric cars.
Chris Hook (23:22):
That's important to me. If we're just keeping pace with the market, then I'm not doing a good job and we're not doing what we need to be doing. We should be trying to run ahead of that. As I was describing earlier, when I talked about taking this job, the Uber driver in most cities is not the natural early adopter of this technology. The bar is higher. If you're going to make a living out of this vehicle, you got to know it's going to work for you. EVs are harder to make work if you can't charge them at home, and most drivers on our platform don't have access to putting a charger on a driveway at home. There's some practical stuff that makes it harder. We want to be outpacing the market despite that.
(23:59):
And then it really matters from an emissions perspective because the average Uber driver drives four or five times more miles than the average member of the population. And so if you can get those cars to electrify, they have a massively out-sized impact on actual emissions' reduction from transportation, which is a real problem sector in general in terms of emissions. Lots of countries, it's taken off the biggest sector of source of emissions for that economy. They have a really outside impact. They have an outside impact on things like air pollution given where they're doing those trips.
(24:31):
We think there's a great return on encouragement of that transition and it seems to be going okay. As I said, I gave you some stats earlier about levels of adoption in US, Canada and Europe, which is our key focus areas. We measure in terms of the proportion of all the miles that are happening on the platform being done in these vehicles. Middle of this year we're up to about 8.5% in Europe and just over 5% in the US and Canada. That's obviously early days. There's a long way to go to those goals we mentioned, but it does feel like momentum is there and we're starting to be able to accelerate.
Cody Simms (25:04):
And I think it was, what, 3.7 billion total passenger trips across the US, Canada and Europe. That's also a lot of consumers experiencing electric vehicles maybe for the first time.
Chris Hook (25:14):
That's an angle which I hadn't thought about much when I started. I was very focused on the driver, how you make it make sense for them, but actually the scale of Uber gives you a huge opportunity to introduce people to this technology, and so we looked at it with the average EV drivers are taking 150 people a month or something. You do the maths, you get to a really big number like you just said. For loads of those people, it's their first experience.
(25:43):
We had to run a campaign in the US about how you open a Tesla door because we scaled this up and all of a sudden a lot of people couldn't get in their cars because they had never used one of those slightly weird door handles. We to run a campaign. That's a silly example, but it's illustrative of the fact this is us trying to push this into the mainstream. I would hope that here's a bunch of people who are like, "Oh yeah, these cars are nice and maybe actually when I switch my car, I'll get one of these." That, I think, is a really positive knock on effect of the work.
Cody Simms (26:14):
We can come back to some of the things you put in front of consumers in a minute. I want to finish the driver side of things because to me, we talked about drivers acquiring cars and how they can access them. You started to talk about, to me, the next big question. Every time I get in a EV Uber, I frankly kind of grill my driver.
Chris Hook (26:30):
You and me both, Cody.
Cody Simms (26:33):
How do you charge this? Where do you go to charge it? How often do you need to charge it? How long can you drive without charging it? What is it like driving this relative to a gas car when you were driving in Uber? How is your time allocation different? Share a little bit about what you've learned around, I would presume, one of the awesome things for drivers is charging is a lot cheaper than filling up at the pump with gas. From a cost perspective, once you factor out the upfront cost of the car, it's probably lower on a monthly basis in terms of making their number, but it takes longer and so they have to factor that into their time of day and their routine. What have you learned around what drivers need and want with respect to charging and how they are adapting their driving patterns accordingly?
Chris Hook (27:17):
So it's a real thing, and as you probably understand when you ask those questions, it's a shift to go from having a gas car to having an EV in terms of both the practicalities and the amount of thought that has to go into it. Most drivers are charging at least every other day. Sometimes every day, depends a little bit on the model that they're driving and how their work patterns work. And so you've got to plan that in and you've got to try and think about how you make that part of your routine. It's quite a big barrier to people who haven't yet made the switch, just worrying about the realities of that. Generally speaking, I would say people's experience is better once they make the switch than they fear it's going to be, but it's certainly something that stands in people's way. There's a kind of anxiety in that, which is entirely understandable.
(28:02):
So we'll talk about two types of things that we're trying to do. Firstly is working with companies or governments who are putting this infrastructure in the ground and trying to make the case as loudly as we can that there is a big constituency of drivers who are going to use this stuff a lot, who really want you to put it in their neighborhood or in places in the city that they drive frequently. The big challenge for all of those companies is utilization. How do I know when I put this piece of hardware in the ground that someone's going to use it a lot and I'm going to get the payback that I want? We do things like share data on where trips are happening in a city where drivers are leaving their cars, such that you can grow some confidence in, okay, if I put this hub just here, it'll work.
(28:44):
Then how do you make it affordable? When you talk to these Uber drivers, I'm sure one thing you find out is that they have a great knowledge of their price per kilowatt hour on different charges all over their city. They're like power users of that technology. We also do a lot of work on how do we try and make sure that those prices make sense. And then the piece that we're excited about trying to build, some of what we talked about in the summer when we had our tech event was, how do we use our tech to make that process less painful and more seamless? We've just started to introduce, for example, amount of battery left into our matching algorithms so that you don't, as a driver, get offered a trip that's going to take you out to the airport if you haven't got the range to get to the airport.
(29:27):
We're going to try and introduce notifications into the app to say, "Okay, well, we think now is a good time to charge," and we can start to balance a whole bunch of different factors: How much battery do you have left? How much demand is there on the platform right now? Where are you in the city? What charge points are available? If we can do the work to reduce some of that cognitive load on a driver, we think we can have a really material impact in how seamlessly you can make that transition happen. But it's a big behavior shift. We shouldn't underestimate that. I'm quite optimistic about how it's progressing, but it's going to continue to be something that we try and innovate on and it's certainly going to be something that we talk to drivers about a lot as the transition happens. There's a lot of investment that needs to go into making this infrastructure materialize in our big cities.
Cody Simms (30:11):
Do you see drivers `moving into a world where they can get some kind of charging memberships or things like that to get access to guaranteed rates at charging stations or this that and the other?
Chris Hook (30:21):
We've tried that in a few places, free subscription programs or discounted rates. That definitely worked. If you can do that to try and ensure that people have reliability is the key. I know when I turn up this place that it's going to be available for me, then that's great. Also, often you can do smart stuff to make sure that everyone's not trying to charge at the same time. Uber drives are operating as a collective all through the day and night, and so you can spread that demand a bit if you think about smart stuff like how you price it, how you incentivize, when and where is the right time to charge.
Cody Simms (30:54):
It looks like, I saw one of the partnerships you all announced recently was with EVgo. I don't know what geography that's in, I presume the US, where drivers get access to the EVgo fast charging locations, which presumably they would get access to anyway, but they can save a significant proportion on the standard charging rate as an example.
Chris Hook (31:12):
That's about volume. That's our saying to EVgo, "Look, there's thousands and thousands of drivers who are adopting these vehicles every month. Your network is one of the most ubiquitous in the country. How can we work together in a way that makes sense for them and for you??
Cody Simms (31:27):
Interestingly, you talked about some changes in updates in the app to help drivers either find charge points or charging stations or to, again, help them be more efficient with the routes that they run. Interestingly, you also it seems like have made some updates in the app even for internal combustion cars to help the app find more fuel efficient pathways for cars to take in addition to presumably the fastest route for passengers.
Chris Hook (31:50):
That was a cool project. We run an internal competition every year where we ask teams to pitch in suggestions on how they could use what they do to advance our sustainability goals. It's kind of a hackathon style effort. Uber is at its core a technology company, and so we want to use that expertise and that power, and that was one of the ideas that came through that program Eco Roots. It was like, okay, we spend a lot of time thinking about how you get from point A to point B. How do we ensure that we do that in a way that is as environmentally friendly as possible? That's a great example of making it easy to be greener as a rider or even as a driver. You don't have to make a choice or you don't have to try and trade off anything in that case, it's just something we can do in the background. But actually, when you multiply it up, it has significant impact.
Cody Simms (32:40):
We've talked about drivers and their access to acquiring vehicles. We've talked about their access to charging and how they do the math and how they think about making the transition to an EV and the work you're doing to make it easier for them there. Let's hit briefly on the rider side. What are the things you're putting in front of riders like me that are helping us make good choices when we go to ride Uber and what does that look like?
Chris Hook (33:02):
We talked a lot about drivers. They're the core of this. They're the guys who've got to make the choice, but it's a two-sided marketplace. Actually, I think there's enormous amounts that we can do to engage the 25 million people who use Uber on a given month. The kind of obvious one of those is how do you give someone like yourself the choice about what vehicle turns up, and then how do you do that in a way that again, doesn't require a lot of compromise? I've consistently been of the view that we should not make the sustainable option somehow the preserve of just the few who can afford it. That doesn't seem like the right philosophy. That seems limiting if what you're actually trying to achieve is a hundred percent of your business switching over.
(33:45):
And so something like our Uber Green product, which I was talking about earlier, which is the same price as regular Uber, but the difference is that as a consumer you're making an active choice about which type of vehicle comes to pick you up is, I hope, a really great way to create a positive loop where we demonstrate that there is a demand out there. We're helping to fulfill people's latent enthusiasm for making this transition happen, but in a way that doesn't cost them a lot. Doesn't either cost them more in actual dollar terms or doesn't mean that they have to wait a lot longer and it's a lot less convenient because we launched that when we get to a point where we have enough of these types of vehicles in the marketplace that the experience is still good. Hopefully your Uber Green reserved to take you to the airport and it's going to feel like a logical experience.
Cody Simms (34:35):
I've noticed typically the Uber Green is the same price, it's just sometimes it's a little bit longer by a matter of a few minutes. I presume that's the time is money piece that just the more these other incentives kick in to get drivers onto the platform, your goal would be that you get to time parody there, presumably.
Chris Hook (34:55):
Somewhere like London where we're at one in five of those vehicles are EVs, we're kind of there. And not in every single case, but a lot of them. We do a lot of research, as you can imagine, on what consumers want, what riders want. There's a lot of people for whom this is an important topic, but there's only a very few number of people for whom they've got the means to therefore spend a lot more money on making it happen. Most people want to do a positive thing, but they also are primarily getting an Uber because they need it to be affordable and reliable. And so my job is to make sure that you can square that circle.
Cody Simms (35:27):
All right, let's make sure we hit on the initiatives and programs you've recently announced on the Uber Eats side of the business, because as you discussed, you've got the dual challenge of the logistics of getting drivers to move to EV, but then also working with the restaurants on the packaging components.
Chris Hook (35:43):
We brought Uber Eats into the party this year and that was important because it's grown a lot in the last few years. It's a big part of our business now. The pandemic really accelerated that. We wanted to recognize that was also part of our sustainability challenge. On the vehicle side is much of the same stuff. How do you get all of those delivery vehicles to be zero emissions as quickly as possible? There's a few more choices there because you have people delivering things on foot, on bikes, on mopeds, et cetera. We've got a bigger ecosystem of vehicles to think about.
(36:13):
On this challenge around packaging, how do you ensure that by delivering things, we're not adding a lot of additional packaging waste into the ecosystem? That's a really important issue for the world and it's also a really important issue for consumers. We see that, again, a lot in the research in terms of people saying, "I enjoy the convenience of this, but I don't love when I order this food, it turns up in a lot of stuff that's going to go in my bin." We're trying to work hard to think about ways in which we can change that reality.
Cody Simms (36:42):
And the big one of those is, again, leveraging your scale and buying power to create procurement relationships with packaging providers that can offer better prices to a restaurant than they might be able to get on their own for these reusable or compostable packaging. Is that right?
Chris Hook (36:59):
A hundred percent. It's that, and that's particularly important for the thousands and thousands of small, medium-sized businesses that operate through the platform. Then it's also joining forces with some of the bigger players who we partner with, many of whom already have really ambitious targets of their own in terms of how do they get to sustainable packaging in various forms. That might differ a little bit depending if they're primarily selling burgers or coffee or pizza or whatever. But we also want to be sure that we're part of a positive relationship with them so that delivery component of their businesses is not a drag on their overall targets. That's been actually really positive. It's been great to go deeper on a bunch of those conversations. It's kind of both, but yes, ultimately it's about making it make economic sense so that people have the access and the ability to make that transition happen quickly.
Cody Simms (37:45):
Chris, do you foresee a time at some point, given these targets you've set on all sides of these businesses, where non-compliance starts to become a problem for either drivers or restaurants if they haven't shifted to an EV by a certain time or if the restaurant is still using a bunch of plastic essentially waste in their process, they start to not be able to participate with Uber?
Chris Hook (38:11):
We're hopeful that a lot of this can be achieved through a lot of positive incentives and pulling forward that transition. As I said, there's a lot of enthusiasm to make this transition happen quickly, and that's why we've got these goals. We haven't yet had to be in a position anywhere where we sort of turn that into, okay, well you're going to stop being able to be operating on a platform after this certain date. There are some places in the world where regulation is moving in that direction and actually, therefore it's kind of on us to give people the opportunity to be ahead of that regulation. I would expect more of that to happen I think over the coming decade. Actually, that can be a real positive for us in terms of working hand-in-glove with cities or states or federal governments to make that happen.
(38:56):
And so I think we'll get to that point we're in collaboration with those who are either licensing the business, regulating the business, or providing broader regulatory framework. That transition will happen. If we don't do the work and that regulation is coming to force, then people are really struggling to think about how they're going to continue to operate. That's where I think we'll get to. I'm very optimistic, as I said before, that with the right amount of effort on our side and the right amount of collaboration, we'll already be at that point and it won't really become an issue for most of the people who are working through the platform.
Cody Simms (39:27):
Great perspective, helping everyone in your ecosystem get out in front of what honestly seems quite inevitable, whether it's through regulation or just market forces and being out in front of the transition. Listening to all the different initiatives you have, one of the things I like to think with my entrepreneur hat on is, where are there opportunities for entrepreneurs, for startups to lean in and help Uber in these areas? And gosh, I kind of jotted down a few different areas as you were talking. It seemed like things in the incentive space around incentivizing EV adoption is an area where it seems like you've done a lot of partnerships; Things in the incentive space around access to chargers and helping drivers manage that seems like an area where you've been doing a lot of partnerships. Then obviously as we just talked about with Uber Eats, anyone that's a creator or owner of sustainable packaging brand potentially could engage with Uber to help be a channel partner out to lots of different restaurants. Are those kind of the big categories that you would think of or are there others?
Chris Hook (40:25):
No, I think that's right. I think they're all there. We use a lot internally and externally about climate being a team sport. I really believe that that's true, as it would be completely hubristic of us to assume that, oh, just because we're big, we can make this happen. It's not true. We've got to work with everybody in the ecosystem. That means other big companies, sure. And it means governments, et cetera. But it means all of those innovators too.
(40:50):
I see loads of exciting stuff happening, and we're trying to be as open as we can to bring in all of those people in, and hopefully the ecosystem that we have is a great opportunity for a lot of those people to prove their concept, scale their business, think about how they reach an audience through a platform like Uber. I'm always open to those conversations, and I think a lot of the acceleration that we want to see will happen because smart people are thinking about how they use their expertise. They build technologies, et cetera that are going to get us there. I'm sure a lot of collaboration is required for us to be making the progress we want to make.
Cody Simms (41:31):
Well, Chris, I have to get to an Uber Green here pretty shortly, and I'm sure I'm going to ask my driver lots of questions about their experience. I know you have to get to your next thing. Before we do, anything else I should have asked, anything we should have covered that we didn't touch on, any last remarks that you want to share with us?
Chris Hook (41:45):
I don't think so. It's been super interesting to talk to you and be part of this group. I'm really keen on ways to connect with people who are also enthusiastic about this topic. Hopefully some of that enthusiasm came through. Maybe we can come back and give you updates on the progress and how it's going and what we're learning through the journey.
Cody Simms (42:01):
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you making the time to share with us what you're up to, and looking forward to seeing all the initiatives that you'll continue to pursue.
Chris Hook (42:11):
Great. Enjoy your Uber Green ride.
Cody Simms (42:13):
Thanks, Chris.
Chris Hook (42:14):
Thank you.
Jason Jacobs (42:14):
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey Podcast.
Cody Simms (42:19):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity.
Jason Jacobs (42:28):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at mcjcollective.com. If you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter @mcjpod.
Yin Lu (42:41):
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Cody Simms (42:50):
Thanks, and see you next episode.