You may think of London as the home to a proper British population that enjoys some of the most historic buildings and monuments in the world, but this city is fraught with the same challenges that any other large city faces. The fact is London may even have it worse in some ways because this city has been around much longer than some of the other large cities we’re normally familiar with such as New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. Because of the large population and number of cars on the road the pollution in London has gotten to a point that something must be done.
Strangely enough, London introduced a congestion charge in 2003 which put it in the front of the line of cities that needed to try and reduce inner-city pollution, but for some reason not much has been done about this problem for the past thirteen years. Finally there is something that will be done to see if the city of London is a good place to begin reducing the pollution, which this place desperately needs. The challenge is to find out if London has the right equipment to be able to balance out what can be feasible and what can actually be profitable.
Uber has stepped up to the plate to see if they can help London learn if they can be the right place for pollution reduction methods through the use of EV models. Working with a study that’s being run by the Energy Saving Trust (EST) London will now have twenty Nissan Leaf models and thirty BYD e6s on the roads to showcase the first fifty EV models that will have Uber drivers behind the wheel to see how these cars are used and if this is even possible in London with its current network of charging stations.
Even if there aren’t enough charging stations in London right now, the data collected by EST will be able to help inform the policy makers whether or not they need to expand their network in order to make EV taxis and Uber vehicles the wave of the future. This expansion would also help to spurn a greater interest in EV models for city dwellers that could make use of the cars more and help to reduce the pollution that seems to put a fog over the city on a daily basis.
While this isn’t the first time EVs have been used by Uber since the company tested some for the Chicago market last year, this could mark a pivotal moment for the city of London and the challenges it faces with air pollution. Hopefully this will be a successful test, it’s just too bad it took this long to make it happen. If this is a success you can expect to see more EV models make their way to the streets of London to take advantage of being able to charge up at the stations around the city and we will also see an increase in EV Uber models as well.
This post may contain affiliate links. Meaning a commission is given should you decide to make a purchase through these links, at no cost to you. All products shown are researched and tested to give an accurate review for you.
