Technologies

How Uber Plans to Slash the Carbon Footprint of Your Food Deliveries and Rides

Cleaner rides, greener eats, a happier planet.

Your Friday post-work Uber Eats order is going to get a whole lot greener – and we don’t necessarily mean in the healthy food sense. Uber on Thursday announced a slew of product updates, all designed to help the company meet its climate commitments while helping Uber users make more planet-friendly choices.

The convenience and fun of ordering food through a delivery app make Uber Eats and its competitors an attractive proposition for those nights you fancy something different for dinner, or just don’t have the energy to cook. But those deliveries have an environmental cost. The carbon footprint of households that spend £50 (roughly $63) per week on food delivery services is 450% higher on average than those that don’t, according to research from CNET’s sister site USwitch in 2021.

Now Uber is committing to slashing the carbon emissions of those deliveries, so you can keep enjoying your takeout without putting pressure on the climate. The company promises that, by 2040, 100% of couriers will use zero-emissions vehicles and that, by 2030, 100% of restaurants on its app will use sustainable packaging. Bringing in this change will be a major challenge, said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi at Uber’s sustainability event in London, but one the company hopes other services and restaurants will join in with.

Uber Green Packaging filter on an phone screen — Uber Eats’ new filter.

Uber

«Tackling plastics and waste is a whole new ballgame for us,» he said. «We’re the first global delivery platform to set this kind of goal to go green, but we certainly should not be the last.»

Recognizing that the cost of sustainable packaging can still be prohibitively expensive for restaurants, the company is also partnering with the World Wildlife Fund, among others, to research how it can work with restaurants to make green packaging options more affordable.

To make it easier for you to do your part, Uber will provide a new option in the Uber Eats app that will allow you to filter restaurants by those that offer green packaging options – whether that be recyclable, reusable or compostable.

Greener rides

As a company that relies heavily on car use, Uber acknowledges it’s only right that it set ambitious sustainability goals for itself. With the impacts of human-caused climate change being felt all over the world in the form of wildfires, droughts and extreme weather events, the company is committed to switching its fleet to electric vehicles in order to reduce the amount of carbon its service pumps out.

More than 60,000 Uber drivers were in electric vehicles as of last month, said Khosrowshahi – three times as many as a year ago. The company wants all of its drivers to make the transition to EVs, but this is another huge challenge for Uber, given that many drivers find the cost of electric cars prohibitively expensive.

Protestor holding "stop Uber greed" sign — Some drivers want Uber to pay for EVs.

Katie Collins/CNET

Protestor holding — Some drivers want Uber to pay for EVs.

Katie Collins/CNET

Outside of the London event on Thursday, a small group of Uber drivers, numbering fewer than 10, were protesting the company’s «greed» and its policies, which they claimed center profits over driver income. If Uber wants drivers to buy electric vehicles, it should shoulder the costs itself, said Abdurzak Hadi, who has been driving for Uber since 2014.

«If I have to pay for it, the fares should rise up,» he said. «There’s inflation in the country and everything has gone up, but our fares have gone down.»

On stage, Khosrowshahi addressed the difficulties around switching to electric vehicles. «EVs are still too expensive, charging is still too confusing,» he said. «What we need to accomplish is to make it absolutely effortless.»

Uber says it’s expanding partnerships designed to bring down those costs for drivers, as well as educating them on the total cost efficiency through a hub on the driver app. It’s also providing drivers with a suite of new tools to help ensure charging is as efficient and convenient as possible for them.

Best Electric Cars and EVs for 2023

On the rider side, Uber is making it easier for you to understand and reduce your environmental impact. Starting this week you’ll be notified when you’re on an eco-friendly route, and from later this year you’ll be able to see in your Uber app any carbon emissions savings you’ve made by using the Uber Green service to travel in an electric vehicle.

The company has just expanded Uber X Share to 18 new cities and has rebranded Car Next Door, an Australian car-sharing platform it owns, as Uber Car Share, with an imminent North America launch planned for Boston and Toronto.

Uber Green Curb Access screenshot — Coming to an airport near you soon.

Uber

In recognition of the fact that around 15% of all Uber rides are trips to and from an airport (making them longer than the average Uber ride, with higher emissions), the company also plans to incentivize you to pick Uber Green over Uber X with a number of perks. These include lower fares and exclusive access to curbside pickup zones and other preferred areas. In some locations, drivers on these routes will also have access to discounted or free fast chargers to juice up their electric vehicles.

Initially, Uber’s airport partners will include Portland (PDX), Phoenix (PHX), London Heathrow (LHR) and Madrid (MAD), although it eventually hopes that green perks will be available at all airports it provides rides to and from.

Uber is also hoping its policies will feed into the electric vehicle revolution more broadly, said Khosrowshahi. The company is responsible for providing many people with their first experience of riding in an EV, he said. «And the first time that you try electric, you become much more likely to try an electric vehicle in your personal life, whether it’s buying an electric vehicle, or electing to use Uber Green whenever you use the service.»

Technologies

I’ve Seen It With My Own Eyes: The Robots Are Here and Walking Among Us

The «physical AI» boom has created a world of opportunity for robot makers, and they’re not holding back.

It’s been 24 years since CNET first published an article with the headline The robots are coming. It’s a phrase I’ve repeated in my own writing over the years — mostly in jest. But now in 2026, for the first time, I feel confident in declaring that the robots have finally arrived.

I kicked off this year, as I often do, wandering the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and its hotel-based outposts on the lookout for the technology set to define the next 12 months. CES has always been a hotbed of activity for robots, but more often than not, a robot that makes a flashy Vegas debut doesn’t go on to have a rich, meaningful career in the wider world.

In fact, as cute as they often are and as fun as they can be to interact with on the show floor, most robots I’ve seen at CES over the years amount to little more than gimmicks. They either come back year after year with no notable improvements or are never seen or heard from again.

In more than a decade of covering the show, I’ve been waiting for a shift to occur. In 2026, I finally witnessed it. From Hyundai unveiling the final product version of the Boston Dynamics Atlas humanoid robot in its press conference to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s focus on «physical AI» during his keynote, a sea change was evident this year in how people were talking about robots.

«We’ve had this dream of having robots everywhere for decades and decades,» Rev Lebaredian, Nvidia’s vice president of Omniverse and simulation told me on the sidelines of the chipmaker’s vast exhibition at the glamorous Fontainebleau Hotel. «It’s been in sci-fi as long as we can remember.»

Throughout the show, I felt like I was watching that sci-fi vision come to life. Everywhere I went, I was stumbling upon robot demos (some of which will be entering the market this year) drawing crowds, like the people lining up outside Hyundai’s booth to see the new Atlas in action.

So what’s changed? Until now, «we didn’t have the technology to create the brain of a robot,» Lebaredian said.

AI has unlocked our ability to apply algorithms to language, and it’s being applied to the physical world, changing everything for robots and those who make them.

The physical AI revolution

What truly makes a robot a robot? Rewind to CES 2017: I spent my time at the show asking every robotics expert that question, sparked by the proliferation of autonomous vehicles, drones and intelligent smart home devices.

This exercise predated the emergence of generative AI and models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but already I could see that by integrating voice assistants into their products, companies were beginning to blur the boundaries of what could be considered robotics.

Not only has the tech evolved since that time, but so has the language we use to talk about it. At CES 2026, the main topic of conversation seemed to be «physical AI.» It’s an umbrella term that can encompass everything from self-driving cars to robots.

«If you have any physical embodiments, where AI is not only used to perceive the environment, but actually to take decisions and actions that interact with the environment around it … then it’s physical AI,» Ahmed Sadek, head of physical AI and vice president of engineering at chipmaker Qualcomm told me.

Autonomous vehicles have been the easiest expression of physical AI to build so far, according to Lebaredian, simply because their main challenge is to dodge objects rather than interact with them. «Avoiding touching things is a lot easier than manipulating things,» he said.

Still, the development of self-driving vehicles has done much of the heavy lifting on the hardware, setting the stage for robot development to accelerate at a rapid pace now that the software required to build a brain is catching up.

For Nvidia, which worked on the new Atlas robot with Boston Dynamics, and Qualcomm, which announced its latest robotics platform at CES, these developments present a huge opportunity.

But that opportunity also extends to start-ups. Featured prominently at the CES 2026 booth of German automotive company Schaeffler was the year-and-a-half-old British company Humanoid, demonstrating the capabilities of its robot HMND 01.

The wheeled robot was built in just seven months Artem Sokolov, Humanoid’s CEO, told me, as we watch it sort car parts with its pincerlike hands. «We built our bipedal one for service and household much faster — in five months,» Sokolov added.

Humanoid’s speed can be accounted for by the AI boom plus an influx of talent recruited from top robotics companies, said Sokolov. The company has already signed around 25,000 preorders for HMND 01 and completed pilots with six Fortune 500 companies, he said.

This momentum extends to the next generation of Humanoid’s robots, where Sokolov doesn’t foresee any real bottlenecks. The main factors dictating the pace will be improvements in AI models and making the hardware more reliable and cost effective.

Humanoid hype hits its peak

Humanoid the company might have the rights to the name, but the concept of humanoids is a wider domain.

By the end of last year, the commercialization of humanoid robots had entered an «explosive phase of growth,» with a 508% year-on-year increase in global market revenue to $440 million, according to a report released by IDC this month.

At CES, Qualcomm’s robot demonstration showed how its latest platform could be adapted across different forms, including a robotic arm that could assemble a sandwich. But it was the humanoids at its booth that caused everyone to pull out their phones and start filming.

«Our vision is that if you have any embodiment, any mechatronic system, our platform should be able to transform it to a continuously learning intelligent robot,» said Qualcomm’s Sadek. But, he added, the major benefit of the humanoid form is its «flexibility.»

Some in the robotics world have criticized the focus on humanoids, due to their replication of our own limitations. It’s a notion that Lebaredian disagrees with, pointing out that we’ve designed our world around us and that robots need to be able to operate within it.

«There are many tasks that are dull, dangerous and dirty — they call it the three Ds — that are being done by humans today, that we have labor shortages for and that this technology can potentially go help us with,» he said.

We already have many specialist robots working in factories around the world, Lebaredian added. With their combination of arms, legs and mobility, humanoids are «largely a superset of all of the other kinds of robots» and, as such, are perfect for the more general-purpose work we need help with.

The hype around robots — and humanoids in particular — at CES this year felt intense. Even Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter acknowledged this in a Q&A with reporters moments after he unveiled the new Atlas on stage.

But it’s not just hype, Playter insisted, because Boston Dynamics is already demonstrating that they can put thousands of robots in the market. «That is not an indication of a hype cycle, but actually an indication of an emerging industry,» he said.

A huge amount of money is being poured into a rapidly growing number of robotics start-ups. The rate of this investment is a signal that the tech is ready to go, according to Nvidia’s Lebaredian.

«It’s because, fundamentally, the experts, people who understand this stuff, now believe, technically, it’s all possible,» he said. «We’ve switched from a scientific problem of discovery to an engineering problem.»

Robot evolution: From industry to home

From what I observed at the show, this engineering «problem» is one that many companies have already solved. Robots such as Atlas and HMND 01 have crossed the threshold from prototype to factory ready. The question for many of us will be as to when will these robots be ready for our homes.

Playter has openly talked about Boston Dynamics’ ambitions in this regard. He sees Atlas evolving into a home robot — but not yet. Some newer entrants to the robotics market — 1X, Sunday Robotics and Humanoid among them — are keen to get their robots into people’s homes in the next couple of years. Playter cautions against this approach.

«Companies are advertising that they want to go right to the home,» he said. «We think that’s the wrong strategy.»

The reasons he listed are twofold: pricing and safety. Playter echoed a sentiment I’ve heard elsewhere: that the first real use for home humanoid robots will be to carry out care duties for disabled and elderly populations. Perhaps in 20 years, you will have a robot carry you in and out of bed, but relying on one to do so when you’re in a vulnerable state poses «critical safety issue,» he said.

Putting robots in factories first allows people to work closely with them while keeping a safe distance, allowing those safety kinks to be ironed out. The deployment of robots at scale in industrial settings will also lead to mass manufacturing of components that will, at some point, make robots affordable for the rest of us, said Playter (unlike 1X’s $20,000 Neo robot, for example).

Still, he imagines the business model will be «robots as a service,» even when they do first enter our homes. Elder care itself is a big industry with real money being spent that could present Boston Dynamics with a market opportunity as Atlas takes its first steps beyond the factory floor.

«I spent a lot of money … with my mom in specialty care the last few years,» he said. «Having robots that can preserve autonomy and dignity at home, I think people will actually spend money — maybe $20K a year.»

The first «care» robots are more likely to be companion robots. This year at the CES, Tombot announced that its robotic labrador, Jennie, who first charmed me back at the show in 2020, is finally ready to go on sale. It served as yet another signal to me that the robots are ready to lead lives beyond the convention center walls.

Unlike in previous years, I left Vegas confident that I’ll be seeing more of this year’s cohort of CES robots in the future. Maybe not in my home just yet, but it’s time to prepare for a world in which robots will increasingly walk among us.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Jan. 29, #1685

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Jan. 29, No. 1,685.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle was a tough one for me. I never seem to guess three of the letters in this word. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has one vowel and one sometimes vowel.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with F.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with Y.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a pastry that breaks apart easily.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is FLAKY.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, Jan. 28, No. 1684 was CRUEL.

Recent Wordle answers

Jan. 24, No. 1680: CLIFF

Jan. 25, No. 1681: STRUT

Jan. 26, No. 1682: FREAK

Jan. 27, No. 1683: DUSKY

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Jan. 29 #697

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Jan. 29, No. 697.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a bit of a puzzler until you realize the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Talk of the town.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: What a legend.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

ROIL, CLAIM, RARE, HELP, PEAR, PEARS, MORE, COIN, SPEAR, SPEARS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers: