Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Uber Is Ditching Diesel in London

September 8, 2017

The ride-hailer wants to get a little greener. Uber has announced that by the end of 2019 all of its drivers in London working on its regular low-cost UberX service will use hybrid or fully electric vehicles, and no diesel cars will be allowed on its network. It plans to extend the policy across the U.K. by 2022, and hopes its London fleet will be all-electric by 2025. As part of the move, it will start a new Clean Air Fund, which will help its drivers upgrade to cleaner vehicles, offering them as much as $6,500 to help swap existing fossil fuel cars for electric or hybrid models.

While diesel cars aren’t prevalent in the U.S., they’re prized for their fuel efficiency in Europe, where pump prices are far higher. But there’s an increasing push on the continent to move away from the fuel, because it also produces far larger quantities of soot and nitrogen oxides than gasoline motors. Many cities are banning diesel cars from their roads, and the U.K. has even announced that it will ban the sale of all new combustion engine cars starting in 2040. Clearly, Uber is trying to preempt that—and notch up some rare positive PR points, too.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.