Transportation

All -Tesla Ride Share Company Aims To Clear The Air


Raven Hernandez wasn’t always healthy. Just as she was entering law school in Malibu, Calif., she found herself “very, very ill” and the view of smog rising from Los Angeles International Airport was simply a sickening sight. 

She decided to learn to heal herself, changing her lifestyle and eating better, which led to her and her husband thinking about trying to make the world a little healthier with fewer carbon emissions. The result? Going back to her hometown of Nashville, Tenn. and last October, launching Earth Rides—a ride share company where every vehicle is a battery electric car.

“The reason we started it is to make healthy cool again,” said Hernandez in an interview. “We’re removing the emissions out of the transportation equation.”

The EVs in Earth Ride’s fleet aren’t just any brand—they’re all Teslas.

“It was always Teslas

TSLA
,” said Hernandez. “We did our research and it’s just a superior product. The battery, it lasts longer, it doesn’t degrade as quick, there’s not as much range anxiety, charging infrastructure, the warranties were very attractive.”

Unlike other ride share companies, Earth Ride owns all five Teslas in its fleet and drivers are direct employees. Hernandez says the advantage of having the drivers on the payroll is “when you have an employee base it allows people to know someone is going to show up because an employee can’t cancel.” 

Indeed, Hernandez says Earth Ride drivers are thoroughly screened through interviews, FBI background checks and fingerprinting. They also go through extensive training on how to operate and charge the vehicles. The drivers sometimes have to also educate riders who have never before been in a Tesla, explaining, “a lot of our riders get in the car, they don’t they don’t know how to open the door.”

The Earth Rides fleet is a blend of new and used cars across the Tesla model line with the exception of the Model 3 which Hernandez says is “too small for anyone taller than five-foot-10 inches. The intention is to expand the fleet by one new car a month. While each additional vehicle is a Tesla, it won’t always be that way. 

Hernandez says she’s having “a serious conversation” with an automaker she’s not ready to name, except to say it’s not Tesla. The talks involve a possible pilot program with a lease-to-own option for drivers who are independent contractors. She’s also open to expanding the breadth of the fleet even further saying, “we would love to partner with as many OEMs (automakers) as possible that have reliable transportation with amazing batteries, where you get more than 250 miles on a charge.” 

Since launching in Nashville in October, Hernandez says about 7,500 riders have hopped in an Earth Rides Tesla, a fact that’s confirmed her reason for starting the business there.

“We brought Earth Rides back to Nashville because if you can make EVs cool in the south, if you can make being healthy cool in the south you can do it anywhere,” she said.

That done, her sights are now set far beyond Music City. By the second quarter of this year Earth Rides will bring its EV ride share business to Austin, Texas, with the intention of setting up shop in what Hernandez described as “all major metropolitan cities in Texas,” including Dallas, San Antonio and Houston, before expanding further to Atlanta, Ga. 

As if going from the sick bed to setting up a healthy business wasn’t enough, Hernandez is also planning network of what she calls Earth Stations—what she calls a “community lifestyle place” to recharge, rest, grab a snack, get your car washed and some work done at a space you can reserve. Hernandez expects the first Earth Stations to begin operation in Nashville in mid-March and Austin some time in some time in Q2. 

The early success of Earth Rides fulfills a promise Hernandez’s family saw in her early on through difficult circumstances. Originally from Panama, Hernandez’s single mother and family settled in Nashville. She tells of “several uncles” who were murdered, which led her to become familiar with the legal system and her eventual enrollment in law school. 

“I always made straight A’s, so people always looked at me as ‘she’s gonna do something’,” Hernandez recalls.

Indeed, she did, and the initial enthusiasm she’s seen for her ride share company featuring those environmentally-friendly electric Teslas has only contributed to the recovery from the illness that first got her thinking about starting the business.

“Mentally for me, knowing that over 7,000 people have potentially considered going electric, and they may not do it today or tomorrow, or this year,” said Hernandez, “but knowing we’re going in the right direction is mentally relieving.”



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