Last month, Lyft published its latest Sustainability & Impact Report. Within it was an ambitious goal, set in 2023: to reach 100 million electric vehicle (EV) rides on our platform by the end of 2025.
As of September 25, 2025, we hit that milestone, with a few months to spare.
This achievement matters. The more drivers who choose EVs, the more riders who can opt for more sustainable modes of transportation, which supports America’s broader transition toward electrification.
Moreover, as Jeremy Bird, Lyft’s EVP of Driver Experience, explains: “This milestone proves that our EV incentives, developed in close collaboration with key partners, are working — and they’re serving drivers.”
Why more and more drivers are choosing EVs
Core to Lyft’s strategy of increasing EV adoption is addressing EV drivers’ needs and pain points.
One of the advantages of EVs for drivers is their potential cost savings over gas-fueled vehicles. To enhance these savings, in 2022, Lyft partnered with EV charging providers EVgo, Electrify America, and EVCS to offer drivers charging discounts. It’s already paying dividends: Drivers saved an estimated $2 million through charging discounts in 2024.
Those discounts “help a lot,” according to Eduardo, a driver in San Francisco who commutes to the city from Sacramento. “I was wasting so much money on a regular gas car. I said to myself, ‘I’m going to give EVs a try,’ and I ended up loving it. They’re really nice cars, and I feel like I’m saving a lot of money compared to hybrids and gas cars.”
“Rideshare drivers are responsible for about a quarter of EVgo’s total throughput and are an important part of our customer base,” says Badar Khan, CEO of EVgo. “EVgo’s discount program with Lyft helps keep money in drivers’ pockets. This, coupled with charging during off-peak hours, helps reduce costs while easing energy demand on the grid — proving that going electric is smart for drivers and communities alike.”
Lyft also offers eligible EV drivers in California, Massachusetts, Maryland, the D.C. metropolitan area, Oregon, and Toronto with special bonuses for completing a certain number of EV rides in a week. In California (our largest EV market), drivers earned over $24.3 million in EV bonuses in 2024. Paolo Freitas Silva was one of the first California drivers to take advantage of them: “That bonus, combined with how cheap it was to charge, basically paid my car loan by itself.” In the U.S. and Canada, over 44,000 drivers have taken advantage of the bonuses so far.
Finally, thanks to our partnership with Wallbox, drivers on the Lyft platform receive discounts on home-charging hardware, helping to offset the upfront costs of switching to electric.
There are other ways that Lyft has been working to make EVs an easier choice for drivers. According to our user research, drivers curious about switching to EVs often cite “range anxiety” — the concern that a vehicle will not have enough charge to reach its destination — as a barrier to entry. In partnership with Smartcar, we launched a feature called “Rides in Range” to ensure drivers are never offered a ride that surpasses their battery range. And, again collaborating with our partners, in 2024, Lyft updated the maps in its app to include real-time data from EVgo, Electrify America, and EVCS on their available public charging stations.
Plus, EV drivers generally get higher tips per ride by about 20% to 25% (on standard rides), according to Lyft data. Gary Whitaker, an EV driver, adds that the cars are a conversation piece: “A lot of people have never driven in them before, and they always have questions about them. That helps with the user experience.” Of course, it’s not just the EVs doing the work, but drivers providing great, tip-worthy service.
For all these reasons combined, we’re not too surprised that since 2023, the percentage of EV miles (eVMT*) on the Lyft platform has grown over 200%. And because we’re committed to ensuring that EVs continue to help drivers earn more, we’re confident that’s a number that will keep growing.
*eVMT is the percentage of ride miles that occurred in an electric vehicle. It is defined as miles driven in an EV between passenger pickup and passenger drop-off divided by all miles driven between passenger pickup and passenger drop-off.
