Rideshare Service with only Tesla Vehicles is Now Available in Sacramento

With the new Teslas and the new business model for the entertainment industry, the Go360 takes to the streets of Sacramento.

Go360 is creating a new paradigm in transportation by offering a comfortable, reliable on-demand ride hailing service in luxury shared vehicles. They geofence and provide dynamic pooling on the routes where they operate, which means the maximum pick up time is 5 minutes and maximum trip time is 10 minutes. The geofence in combination with pooling enables them to reduce ride cost and trip time dramatically.

By pooling riders traveling in the same direction, they also increase the vehicle utilization and reduce the cost of the fare on a per rider basis. This is powered by a multidimensional spatial graph that uses reinforcement learning to adjust the weights along every edge to dynamically route vehicles.

Source: Biz Journals

According to KCRA, the rideshare only serves downtown and midtown Sacramento, trying to help users establish a short connection between the house and public transport. The company promises wait times of less than 5 minutes, and they're doing it only in Teslas.

“Go360 is the future of on-demand transportation. We are committed to work with the power of public transit – creating a fully multimodal solution that gets people from home to transit hubs and back, so they can be the most efficient with their time,” said Sravan Puttagunta, Go360 CEO. “First- and last-mile pooling provides high-quality, affordable and, because we use all-electric vehicles, green transportation options to riders. By keeping vehicles in a certain geographic area, Go360 optimizes for filling cars and picking up and dropping off multiple passengers along dynamically computed routes, without incurring overhead. Our technology improves overall travel times while keeping costs affordable.”

For improved pooling efficiency, Go360 says it “blacklists” high-traffic corridors, highways and on-ramps, allowing the routing algorithm to leverage the free flow of inner-city roads, which helps increase the accuracy of the estimated trip times. It uses its Vision APIs to analyze camera data to generate information about traffic, curb management, pick up and drop off to further increase the efficiency of its service. Long term, this infrastructure can be leveraged to power self-driving cars to operate in the same areas, according to the company.

“The Tesla APIs allow us to control the climate and music, so we are integrating those services into our ride-hailing app,” said Puttagunta.

Go360 works by subscription. You get 4 trips per day that you can share with others. Trips run up to $2.50 each.

“We have a rider base that has a much higher daily active usage compared to a normal person who uses Uber or Lyft,” Puttagunta said.

The Go360 also collects a wealth of data on the streets of Sacramento, which will become the digital highway for self-driving cars - the next step in mobility.

Source: KCRA

“There are a lot more cities like Sacramento in the United States than there are in San Francisco, so for us to be economically viable here is a big proof point for our investors who would then invest into our growth," Puttagunta said.

In Sacramento, concerted efforts have been made to attract new mobility companies so that residents receive the benefits of new technologies that are so rapidly hanging in our world today.

“Sacramento has invested more in economic development than any other community of its size in the country, and that leads to forward-thinking talent choosing our region,” said Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council. He continued. “Mayor Darrell Steinberg is helping to make Sacramento the next innovation hub for new mobility ideas and we are excited for Go360 to be part of the tech growth in our region.”

“Since we are starting in the Sacramento area, Go360 wants to make life easier for super commuters like the 80,000 people who travel the 70 miles from Sacramento to the Bay Area every day. Our pooled rides feed people to rapid transit street cars and the subway. This improves the efficiency of all existing transportation systems, reduces traffic and helps the environment,” said Puttagunta.

The company has plans to expand to other northern California cities such as Davis, Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland, and eventually will roll out to other metro areas. Currently, Go360 has released a Rider and Driver app that allows its riders to use the service.

Featured images: PIERRE-HENRY DESHAYES/AFP/Getty Images