Rideshare EV Charging Insights: Data-Driven Trends as Drivers Electrify

Rideshare companies have been taking concrete steps to add electric vehicles to their platform, increasing the demand for public EV charging globally.

The world’s largest rideshare platform, Uber, has set a particularly ambitious goal: by 2030, 100% of Uber rides in Canada, Europe, and the United States will be in zero-emission vehicles. Lyft, another prominent rideshare service, offers incentives to encourage EV adoption and back-end tools designed to reduce range anxiety.

A reliable EV charging network with plenty of DC Fast Charging stations is essential to keeping all those vehicles moving.

To better understand the charging habits of drivers who rely on fast chargers, we dove into the data from a busy Hypercharge public hub with heavy rideshare usage.

Rideshare drivers rack up higher mileage than the average driver, charge more frequently, and are top candidates for loyalty and membership programs.

Time is money, so they often choose DC fast chargers, usually around hotspots like busy shopping and entertainment districts.

We dug deeper into rideshare user behaviour and preferences by harnessing the data collection and analytic tools of the cloud-based operating platform Quantev™ Operations Suite.

With real-time monitoring and comprehensive reporting, Quantev™ delivers key insights, including:

• The average duration, charging speed, and energy delivered per charging session
• Trends in charger usage within periods of time
• If and when a site should consider expanding charging capacity
• Which chargers could use more promotion to increase usage
• Where dynamic pricing could decrease energy costs, promote charging during off-peak periods, and maximize revenue.

Our sample charging hub is located in a busy urban area near a major transit hub.

Collecting data from more than 8,000 charging sessions over an eight-month period, Quantev™ calculated the following figures for an average session.

*Estimate based on 4 kms per kW for Tesla Model 3.

At 30 kWh, the average energy delivered at this site is less than half the average usable battery capacity of 70 kWh, according to the Electric Vehicle database.

In many cases, the drivers may simply be following the standard advice from EV manufacturers to limit charging to no more than 80% of a battery’s full capacity.

Importantly, while many chargers at the site are rated for higher outputs such as 120 kW, the average charging speed was lower because vehicles typically cannot sustain maximum power throughout the session.

Charging curves taper down as batteries fill, so the average session speed of 60 kW reflects real-world conditions rather than the peak rating of the charger.

This aligns with research by the nonprofit thinktank Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), which found that rideshare drivers typically stick with relatively short charging sessions.

In the study, rideshare drivers added an average of 24 kWh per public charging session, despite 80% of the sessions starting with battery levels below 60%.

More than 65% of the charging sessions lasted less than an hour, and 35% lasted fewer than 15 minutes.

A typical EV driver does the majority of their charging overnight at home or during the day at their workplace using a Level 2 Charger.

In contrast, rideshare drivers are on the go all day, with peak demand at DC fast chargers reflecting the needs of drivers near their locations.

The busiest periods at our reference charging site were from 6 pm to 12 pm, with afternoons a close second. However, the chargers remained active overnight, with usage dropping by less than half, likely due to their proximity to an airport.

More than half the drivers at our sample site used the Hypercharge Driver Mobile App, which offers easy station activation and pay-as-you-go options for a hassle-free charging experience.

In general, rideshare EV drivers tend to be heavy app users, but Quantev™ reports that about 40% of the sessions were paid for directly from the charger via credit card.

This suggests that charging stations without credit card readers could be losing business from rideshare drivers to those that do. 

Our sample charging site has seen a steady increase in usage, with triple the usage and revenue in August 2025 compared to January 2025.

Notably, the average session duration and other key usage figures haven’t varied significantly in that time.

This means the increases are due to more drivers becoming aware of the charging hub as a convenient option and increasing the frequency of their charging at this site.