Now, you can hire an Uber auto at an hourly rate

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

The service in now are in Bengaluru and comes 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 maximum of eight hours, the statement said.

Just make certain that you pay the drivers hard cash. Uber’s payments made through the iphone app reach their drivers on a weekly basis, whereas auto drivers need cash because of their everyday expenses, especially fuel prices. So Uber auto drivers, even several cab drivers, prefer their customers to make cash payments. Actually, many don’t accept rides if the payment method isn't cash.

This is, of course, inconvenient for passengers as you must keep change at 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.