Ford is teaming up with Uber to offer flexible leases on electric vehicles to rideshare drivers.
Uber is under pressure from governments around the world to get more of its drivers into EVs to reduce tailpipe pollution and fight climate change. And Ford is eager to get more of its Mustang Mach-Es on the road as it pours billions of dollars into EV production while incurring huge losses.
Under the new Ford Drive program, Uber drivers would be able to lease a Mustang Mach-E for flexible terms, either one or four-months, depending on the location. And there are other benefits as well. According to Ford:
The vehicle is delivered to the driver within two weeks, and they use the Ford Drive app to manage payments and service. In each city, the Ford Drive team works with local dealers to purchase a fleet of Mach-Es. Service and maintenance of those vehicles are conducted through dealers as well.
But the lease program won’t have a wide rollout yet. To start out, the companies are piloting the program in three cities: San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Ford Drive actually launched already in San Diego, with Ford leasing 150 EVs to Uber drivers in 2022. California is the biggest EV market in the US, and the biggest market for EVs driven on Uber’s ridehail platform.
Uber has been operating its own EV ridehail service in dozens of cities since last year. Only premium EVs, like Tesla, Polestar, and, of course, the 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.
This is the second major partnership to be announced by Ford in recent days. Last week, the automaker said it would adopt Tesla’s EV charging standard in the interest of opening up Elon Musk’s dependable and widespread charging network to Ford EV owners.