Uber is launching a new category of ride called Comfort that sits between the top tier Uber Black service and the more popular Uber X option.
As its name cleverly suggests, Uber Comfort offers a few extras to ensure maximum well-being during your ride. Or at least, that’s the idea.
Specifically, if you request an Uber Comfort ride you’ll be guaranteed a newer, midsize car with minimum legroom requirements — perfect if your pins are longer than average, or if you simply want reassurance that you won’t be taking your trip with your knees around your ears.
Uber Comfort also offers several options that you can choose via the app when you book your ride. These include the ability to request a temperature setting so that the car’s interior feels just right at the very start of the journey. You can also ask for a “quiet ride” in case you need to get some work done, or if you simply don’t feel like chatting with the driver as you tootle through the city.
The quiet mode is a feature that launched recently with Uber Black. In the app, alongside “quiet preferred,” you’ll also find options such as “happy to chat,” which might motivate your driver to launch into a conversation before you’ve even closed the door, and “no preference,” which lets you just go with the flow.
In a blog post announcing the new tier, Uber’s Aydin Ghajar notes that Comfort’s collection of rider preference features isn’t quite on the level of Uber Black, “which provides you access to more exclusive in-app options such as request help with luggage, premium support, and pickup by professional drivers.”
Ghajar doesn’t offer any details about pricing for Uber Comfort, though an image released on Tuesday gives us an idea. So as you can see, where a trip using the basic Pool service costs $14.80, this rises to $23.97 with Uber X, and to $31.16 with Uber Comfort. No, it’s not cheap, but for special occasions and the like, it could come in handy for some rides.
Vehicles offering Uber Comfort are only driven by drivers with a rating of 4.85 or higher, and the service is available now across the U.S. via the Uber app.
