Uber and the environment: tips for fuel efficient driving

At Uber, environment and air quality are taken seriously, which is why our Clean Air Plan aims to provide £200m to support drivers in their switch to electric vehicles. In fact, we want all of our vehicles in London to be fully electric by 2025.

In the meantime, we’ve put together some useful tips for fuel efficient driving, so that you can not only cut down on your environmental impact with Uber, but also improve your fuel consumption. 

Whilst electric cars’ environmental benefits are well-known – and can make driving with Uber more eco-friendly – you can still lower your car’s fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 25% with environmentally friendly driving practices. Here are five easy driving tips that will improve fuel consumption whilst lowering your price at the pump:

Having a heavy foot on the accelerator can cost you in the long run. The most fuel-efficient way to pull away is at a steady pace. Imagine you’ve got a cup of tea on the dashboard – if you’re accelerating hard enough that it’s in danger of spilling, ease up on the pedal.

Road testing has shown that repeatedly changing your speed by as little as 10mph can increase your fuel consumption by 20%. So, if you’re on a long stretch of road keep your foot steady or turn on the cruise control to save on emissions.

When thinking about how to drive more fuel efficiently, remember that the faster you drive, the more fuel you use – and it might not be getting you to your destination any quicker. Driving at 80mph uses about 25% more fuel than driving at 70mph. What’s more, over the course of an average journey it would only cut two minutes from your travel time.

Driving with your tyres under the recommended pressure not only increases your fuel consumption by up to 4%, but it can also knock nearly 6000 miles off their life, meaning you’ll need to replace them sooner.

If you’re fully set on reducing your emissions, the most fuel efficient cars, such as hybrids and electric, produce around 40% less CO2 than petrol-only cars. here are several options on the market that you could decide from. 

However, the new car market can sometimes be a little confusing. We’ve taken a look at the most common types of fuel efficient car to help you narrow down your choices and find the right car for you: 

Whilst still very much the standard, petrol and diesel driven vehicles make up the vast majority of the 2.36 million cars that were registered in 2018. Those built under new Euro 6 regulations actually emit less than some petrol models.

Using both batteries and internal-combustion for power, hybrids are a good choice for getting those emissions down. There’s a range of hybrid-type cars available: 

All hybrid cars offer fuel cost and emissions reductions, with plug-in hybrids leading the pack as the most fuel efficient cars, although it’s always best to check where your nearest charging points are before buying one.

Electric vehicles (EV) are powered entirely from an on-board battery or hydrogen power cell. EVs offer near-zero emissions and significant cost savings, as they can be charged up for as little as £3-4.

It’s time to start improving air quality together. Whether you’re learning how to drive more fuel efficiently and improve fuel consumption or investing in the most fuel efficient cars, we’re behind you every step of the way to improve Uber and the environment.