Uber is bringing its upscale electric car service to more cities, announcing the launch of its Comfort Electric feature in 14 additional cities in North America, bringing the total number of markets to 25.
In May, Uber launched Comfort Electric in a handful of cities, the list of which has been steadily growing since then. Only premium EVs, like Tesla, Polestar, and Ford Mustang Mach-E, would be considered eligible for Comfort Electric trips. It will sit alongside the company’s other EV product, Uber Green, which gives drivers an extra fee (usually $1) to use electric vehicles.
Here are all 25 cities where Uber Comfort Electric is available:
Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore-Maryland, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Connecticut, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Jersey, NYC Suburbs, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St Louis, Vancouver (Canada), Washington, DC
Comfort Electric is an extension of Uber Comfort, in which riders could request extra legroom, quiet cars, and other amenities that are typically associated with its higher-priced Uber Black service. Uber Comfort is not as pricy as Uber Black, but riders pay around 20 to 40 percent more than a typical Uber X trip.
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Image: Uber
Uber has set the goal of becoming a “zero-emissions platform in the US and Canada” by 2030 — a difficult ambition given that Uber classifies its drivers as independent contractors and theoretically can’t force them all to adopt electric vehicles. The company has said it will spend $800 million of its own money to help “hundreds of thousands of drivers in the US, Canada, and Europe transition to battery EVs by 2025.”
Some states, like California, aren’t content to sit back and allow Uber to voluntarily make this decision. The Golden State adopted new rules in 2021 requiring ride-sharing companies to electrify their fleets by 2030 — a few years before the state expects to prohibit the sale of new gas cars completely.
The company is also working to convince more of its drivers to make the switch from gas-powered vehicles to EVs. Uber recently announced that 25,000 drivers have signed on to rent Tesla vehicles through its partnership with car rental company Hertz. That partnership recently expanded to Canada, with Vancouver being the one city outside the US to get the company’s EV service so far.
Uber isn’t the first transportation company to pledge to shift to electric vehicles. In June, Lyft announced it would transition “100 percent” of its fleet to electric vehicles by 2030. Which company makes it first — or at all — has become another source of competition between the two companies.
