A First Ride On Revel’s Fully Electric Ride-Hailing Service In New York City
Electric ride-hailing service Revel is pushing our move into zero-emissions solutions as quickly as possible. On the people moving front, Revel has purchased 700 Teslas and converted them to taxis to drive around New York City by its employees.
On a recent trip to New York City, I noticed Revel’s fleet of bright blue electric taxis and decided to take one back up to the place where I was staying after the day’s adventures.
According to a handful of drivers we talked to on our trip, the company still has a few hundred vehicles that need to be paired with drivers. On the other hand, that still means there are upwards of 400 to 500 of Revel’s Tesla Model 3 and Model Y taxis roaming the streets of New York City and it shows. They seem to be everywhere, with their bright blue Revel livery serving as perhaps the best billboard for the company.
To get started, we installed the Revel app, which was quick and painless. Downloading it over the cell network took a few minutes, followed by the app setup, which was done in under three minutes. It’s a simple matter of entering the usual: name, credit card number, phone number, etc. And before we knew it, we were off to the races.
It felt very Uberesque. Checking the app throughout the day, there always seemed to be a Revel driver a few minutes away no matter where I was. When it came time to actually summon my ride, I was down in SoHo and needed a ride back up to the Hudson Yards area. Revel quickly located one of its Tesla Model 3s from the fleet just two blocks away.
In New York City, that translated to a 2-minute wait before it would get to me. Sure enough, 2 minutes later my driver rolled up in the bright blue, easily recognizable Revel vehicle. Much like it is with Uber, the Revel driver doesn’t know what you look like, so it’s up to the customer to flag down the driver. Not a huge deal and easily solved.
The driver pulled over and I quickly hopped into the air conditioned, nearly silent electric Revel taxi heading toward my destination. The ride itself was just over 20 minutes and set me back $26 minus a $10 promo code that I found online in a quick Google search. The regular price of $26 is far more than the $2.75 I would have paid on the subway, but it’s about what you’d expect from an Uber, Lyft, or taxi for a similar time and distance.
Overall, it’s nice to have a fully electric ride hailing service that’s ramping up in a busy metro area like New York City. It would be ideal if some of the lower costs of operating in the city were passed on to the customer. Though, in the early days of ramping up, it’s likely Revel is still way too deep in the red to think about such things, and understandably so.
We believe the future is electric, and it’s companies like Revel that will make that vision for the future a reality even faster. EVs produce zero emissions in their operations and offer many benefits to cities and passengers alike. It’s great to see Revel succeeding, and we look forward to seeing its operations scale up even further in New York City and beyond.
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