You can now hire an Uber auto in Mumbai, Pune and four other cities at an hourly rate

Bengaluru: Uber on Wednesday launched an on-demand 24x7 Auto Rentals service in India. The service allows riders to book an auto and its driver for several hours with the liberty to make multiple stops along a journey, it said in a statement.

The service in now live in Bengaluru and is available in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune, it said. Prices start at Rs 169 for a one-hour/10 km package with the option of selecting from multiple hourly packages that can be booked up to a maximum of eight hours, the statement said.

Just ensure that you pay the drivers hard cash. Uber’s payments made through the app reach their drivers on a weekly basis, whereas auto drivers need cash for their everyday expenses, especially fuel costs. So Uber auto drivers, even several cab drivers, prefer their customers to make cash payments. In fact, many don’t accept rides if the payment method is not cash.

This is, of course, inconvenient for passengers as one has to keep change in hand, whereas ATMs dispense mostly Rs 500 currency notes. But amid the pandemic especially, the going has got tougher for drivers, and therefore the insistence on cash payments.