Lyft, Inc.
At a Glance
Industry
Internet, Software, Hardware and Technology Services
Project Types
Clean and Renewable Energy, Data Analysis, Zero Emission Vehicles, Freight and Logistics, Sustainability and Energy Management Strategy
Year
2020
Location
San Francisco, CA
Summary
As part of his work with Lyft Inc., Morteza Taiebat provided robust analytics, modeling frameworks and evidence-driven insights for the strategic electrification efforts for Lyft’s commitment to 100% electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030.
Goals
Lyft recently announced a bold commitment to transition to 100% EVs on the Lyft platform by 2030. Meeting this goal will require all vehicles, including drivers’ personal vehicles, to be transitioned to EVs by 2030. The Sustainability team at Lyft tasked EDFCC Fellow Morteza Taiebat to leverage internal data from driver travel patterns to understand which drivers are most suitable for adopting EVs, as well as to quantify the potential economic and environmental benefits. The ultimate goal of the project was to create a data-driven framework to understand the magnitude of drivers suitable for EV adoption and the scale of economic benefits from electrification.
Solutions
In order to identify the opportunities for electrification of ridesharing, Morterza worked cross-functionally with Lyft’s EV Strategy team and identified sources of internal data that could be leveraged for inference and modeling the driving patterns of drivers. Utilizing data-mining approaches, several cohorts of drivers with similar travel patterns emerged. After designing a rigorous test procedure for EV suitability and running several scenarios, Morteza found that a significant portion of drivers on the platform may already be EV-suitable based on their current driving patterns. The analysis further revealed that a significant portion of all driver-days could be met by an existing affordable electric vehicle under most conditions.
After developing a comparative Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model for conventional, hybrid and battery-electric vehicles, Morteza quantified the economic benefits of EV adoption across the various cohorts of drivers, as well as for each single driver on the platform. He found that while economic benefits are sensitive to purchase subsidies and driving intensity, the majority of drivers could save thousands of dollars a year by switching their current vehicle to an EV. If all ideal candidates switched to EVs, the environmental benefits would be significant: over 1M metric tons of avoided greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Impact
Morteza’s recommendations will help Lyft better plan its pathway to 100% EVs on the platform and prioritize educational opportunities for drivers that are most suitable for EV adoption. Moving forward, Lyft will be one step closer to its sustainability goals and can act as a leader for platform emission reduction.