As Los Angeles aims to get additional electric vehicles on the roads and reduce emissions, the city is thinking about making rideshare platforms like Lyft and Uber use electric vehicles. The electric-vehicle mandate was one step under consideration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of the city and transform into carbon-neutral by 2050 per Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the Financial Times reported.
Garcetti has put environmental issues in the center of his platform. He has been mayor as of 2013, and earlier in December he became the head of a network of the largest cities in the world aiming to fight climate change, called C40. “We have the power to regulate car share,” Garcetti told the news outlet. “We can mandate, and are looking closely at mandating, that any of those vehicles in the future be electric.”
Los Angeles hasn’t started formal public consultation about whether to make rideshare services use electric vehicles. However, Garcetti reportedly said that the city was mulling the measure. As it stands, the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee has been seeking more powers to track as well as monitor ridesharing offerings.
The city, for its part, seeks to recycle all of its wastewater by 2035 and take 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2036. The plan also involves purchase electric vehicles for the municipal fleet, with the inclusion of an electric fire engine, and buying more electric buses.
In separate news, Lyft and Uber are organizing and pushing back against a California law that takes effect on Jan. 1 and would make them to classify their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors, a move that would compel the companies to provide things such as health benefits and a minimum wage.
The law created a test that a firm has to pass to determine if workers can be classified as contractors or not.
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