Tales of the Rideshare Monkey Vol.2
So, a little over a month back I gave some impressions of my experiences driving Uber/Lyft with my Model 3 since last July. Now, with a slightly snappier title, I figure I'd continue giving some of my impressions from out in the field since while it is anecdotal, for the most part it does give some (hopefully) good information about what I'm encountering over hundreds of interactions.
I'd like to focus specifically on perceptions of Tesla as a company and its products as it tends to be seen by different generations. This post was largely inspired by two different interactions, one just the other day and one several weeks ago. The more recent one was a high school senior who had never been in a Tesla before and was quite excited (this is pretty normal, even in N. Cal where they rival fleas on a stray dog now) to get to ride in one. With no prompting on my part, she started telling me that Teslas are the "gotta have it" car of their generation. Actually experiencing the car a little seemed to do nothing to dim that desire.
The second is an older gentleman who came dangerously close to being the first person I've ever kicked out of my car on a ride. You can disagree with me. You can even say I'm full of bullshit, but if you do that in my house or my car you're probably going to be invited to depart and take your opinions with you. In his case it was over whether my power provider, Marin Clean Energy, truly was supplying 100% renewable power as the rate plan indicates but rather that it was largely supplied by coal. There being only one coal fired plant left way down in Southern California (for the moment, I looked) I politely disagreed but seeing the futility said I wasn't going to argue about it. I'm not naive enough to think every watt of power I use comes from a windmill or solar cell, but I don't gripe at my bank for not giving me the same bills out of the ATM I put in the month before, either. Fortunately this type of person is a slim minority, but I have seen other instances of this "arrogant ignorance" as I call it and I don't much care for it. Certainty by and large seems to be the province of the pridefully foolish, and this isn't exclusive to any certain group.
As in my previous post, I see to a limited but troubling degree that the FUD is working, to a point. Elon is crazy, Tesla is nearly bankwupt, the cars are full of problems, how often do you have to replace the battery, etc. are still all reoccurring themes. I've altered my response, making it shorter and hopefully more effective than just spewing facts back at them moving forward: How is a company that is disrupting or at odds with big oil, big auto, dealerships, energy companies, Wall street, the Russian space program (Elon), and not advertising going to get anything close to a fair and honest portrayal in our media? I leave them with a big grain of salt, distilled out of a solution of critical thinking, that I hope they'll make a little use of moving forward.
On a completely different topic, I've read others make the comment and completely agree that it would be a significantly advantageous move to have the Tesla Network be available prior to FSD and let people who are interested take part. There is no doubt it would speed adoption because people are going to want to have multiple trips in an Autopilot equipped car with a human in the driver's seat (it's easy to forget how surreal this is when you live with it every day) before they'll jump into a TeslaNetwork robotaxi with the driver's seat vacant. Going even a step further and expanding the Tesla app to have sections for car management, ride requests, and ordering new vehicles would seem to have all sorts of business advantages! (I'm considering bringing this up at the investors meeting on Tuesday, but don't know if I'll be able to work up the courage.)
