Fuel Horizon for ride-hail drivers
Ride-hail apps already know which car a driver has and every mile it drives. That's enough to estimate fuel left with no sensor, predict when the driver will need to fill up, and point them to a partner station near their next drop-off before the warning light ever comes on. Stations pay for the visit; drivers save on every gallon.
Concept · simulated city and pricesWatch a shift
One driver, an 8-hour evening shift in a made-up city. Switch between how refuelling works today and with Fuel Horizon, or compare both on the same shift.
Same shift, both ways
| Today | With Fuel Horizon |
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How the estimate works
The same idea as the planes on the globe: you don't need a fuel sensor if you know the vehicle and how it's moving.
Start from the last fill-up. The driver taps “filled up” or pays with the app's card, so the app knows the tank was full at that moment.
Subtract every mile. GPS already records each trip. Divide by the car's real-world fuel economy, adjusted for city crawl, highway stretches and time spent idling.
Learn each car. Every fill-up shows how many gallons actually went in, so the estimate for that driver gets more accurate week by week, just as the aircraft model was calibrated against published figures.
Predict, then nudge. From the last hour of driving, project when the tank hits 15%. If that's within the hour, suggest the partner station closest to where the next drop-off ends.
- Vehicle
- Make and model from the driver's registration: tank size and fuel economy
- Trips
- GPS miles, speed and idle time, already recorded for fares
- Fill-ups
- A tap in the app or a card transaction resets the tank
- Stations
- Partner locations, prices and current offers
Who pays whom
Stations pay a small fee only for fuel actually bought by a driver they were sent to. Part of it comes back to the driver as a discount. Move the sliders; the numbers are illustrative, not from any company.
Fuel sales assume $3.45 a gallon. Stations also tend to sell snacks, drinks and car washes to those visitors, which isn't counted here.
What exists today
Fuel perks for ride-hail drivers aren't new. What's missing is the prediction.
India
- Uber and Indian Oil offered drivers discounts and loyalty points on petrol, diesel and CNG at IOCL pumps.
- Ola ran cashback and fuel cards with Indian Oil, and fuel e-vouchers with BPCL.
- Rapido and HPCL announced fuel and maintenance benefits for its captains in 2025.
- State-run oil companies run their own station networks, so one deal can cover thousands of pumps.
United States
- Uber links drivers to Shell Fuel Rewards and Upside cash back from the Driver app, and boosted both during the 2026 price spike.
- Lyft has a standing Upside deal: cents per gallon back, more for higher driver tiers.
- Upside is paid by stations for the extra sales it brings and shares that with drivers.
- Most branded US stations are independently owned, so deals are signed station by station or through networks like Upside.
The gap
Every program today is passive cash back: the driver earns it after happening to fill up at a participating station. None of them predicts when a driver will need fuel and puts the right station in front of them at the right moment, on the way to where their next trip ends. That timing is what makes a visit worth paying for, and it's the part Fuel Horizon already does for every plane in the sky.