Uber goes electric in China with launch of UberGreen

The hybrid electric car Uber will use, pictured this weekend in Wuhan, China.

Uber is going green in China with a deal to run hybrid electric cars in one Chinese city. The tie-up is between Uber, the Guangzhou Automobile brand, and a fleet company in the city of Wuhan, which will see ten hybrid cars hitting the streets of Wuhan in an experiment to see if commuters like them. Once it rolls out to consumers, reportedly sometime this week, it’ll be called UberGreen.

The UberGreen initiative was confirmed over the weekend by Uber’s official Uber Wuhan account on Weibo (via CarNewsChina and EVlook).

Uber will use Guangzhou Automobile’s Trumpchi GA5 REV car (REV stands for range-extended EV), as pictured at Uber’s press event in the city, which features a small (1.0-liter, 45kw) petrol engine allied with an electric motor (31kw) and a battery pack. It can do 80 kilometers on pure electric, but with so little electrical power, it’ll probably be running in hybrid mode most of the time.

Uber already operates UberX and its not-for-profit People’s Uber in the city of Wuhan. But it’s not the only company offering green rides. In April the city unveiled a program that will add more than 1,000 electric taxis to its fleet – including 100 Tesla S85 sedans.

California-based Uber now operates in nine cities in mainland China after first launching in August 2013. Recently, Uber has been the target of police raids in several cities, though its operations do not seem to have been affected.

(Source: CarNewsChina)