It is economically more efficient if Uber/DiDi can do dynamic pricing contingent on user’s phone battery level. Because this is a finer granular of price discrimination and given Uber’s large market share, it’s going to charge consumer more but the market as a whole will benefit.
But no one guarantees that the surplus goes to the drivers, given Uber’s dominant network effect, the extra surplus from better price discrimination is likely going to the platform.
The internet doesn’t know, yet—despite anecdotal tiktok/reddit discussions, there aren’t large scale evidence about battery-level-based price discrimination. But this sort of price discrimination is unpleasant, and there are ongoing legislations. For example:
Should Lyft and Uber charge more if your battery is low? California may soon ban that
Maya C. Miller, https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/08/california-surveillance-pricing-ban/, CalMatters
There’s one thing I’d like to point out though. If battery level is banned as an explicit input, it’s still easy—almost trivial—for a platform with rich behavioral and contextual variables to gauge urgency, switching costs, and willingness to pay. These ‘instrumental variables’ can be combined to closely mimics battery-based price discrimination, even if the battery variable is never used.
And you’ll never know in high-dimensional AI black box models.