Uber’s Chief Product Officer On the App’s New Sustainable Ride Option — Plus, a Feature He Thinks Is Underused

Since its inception 15 years ago, Uber has grown to offer a seemingly endless array of features from traditional rides and airport pickups to boats, bikes, and even safari trips. And now, the company has honed in on how it can up the ante on sustainable travel.

“Riders care about their impact [on] the environment,” Uber’s Chief Product Officer — and an occasional Uber driver himself — Sachin Kansal told Travel + Leisure at the company’s annual climate conference in London in October. “Now our job is to help them become green without a lot of impact on their pocket book and a lot of impact on their wait times and their overall experience.”

Specifically, Kansal told us he’s excited about the company’s “EV Preference” which allows travelers to automatically be matched with an electric vehicle when ordering a ride if one is nearby. The feature, which was announced in October and will roll out next year, will be available with UberX to start.

Now, travelers can “set it and forget it” when it comes to establishing the sustainable preference in the app.

Overall though, with so many options, it’s easy to miss or underuse some of its most convenient features. One of the most underused of all, according to Kansal? Group rides.

With this feature — which is different than Uber Pool — travelers can invite others to each add their own pickup or dropoff points instead of requiring just one person to do it all. Each group can be up to four riders and have up to five total stops. Travelers can then choose to split the cost of the ride equally.

“It helps you coordinate,” Kansal told T+L. “Otherwise, what’s happening is there’s a lot of manual planning… versus us just being able to do it.”

Kansal said Uber is also always working to improve tried-and-true features, like airport pickups. In fact, one of the biggest pain points when ordering an Uber from an airport is that every terminal is different, a problem Uber is trying to solve with unique pickup instructions. 

To prepare in advance of landing, Kansal said passengers can go to Uber’s website and look up the airport code or destination for instructions on exactly how Uber works at that airport. 

“When you open the app at an airport, you will see a message which tells you where to go for the pickup, and it also tells you when to request,” Kansal said, “and depending on the airport, you’ll actually be able to see the walking distance as well.”

Better pickup instructions is just one of the many ways the company is trying to make it easier to get to and from a plane as they continue to add new features, like the shuttle option, which Uber introduced in New York City in October. With that, travelers can meet the shuttle at major public transportation hubs in New York City and get to LaGuardia Airport (LGA) for just $18 per person.

Ultimately, Uber has become about much more than just getting from point A to B with everything from food to hot air balloons under its belt. But while it has expanded beyond rides, the company is still introducing new — and wide-ranging — features aimed at improving its original product and making its customer’s lives a bit more convenient.