Know It All: Why Is Every Uber Ride in a Tesla Now?

I don’t normally use this column to get personal, but here goes: I live with an undiagnosed, rudely-unrecognized-by-the-medical-community condition known as “Car Blindness.”

You could pick me up and drop me off every day, and it would take me years to clock the make or model of your vehicle. My best friend has been driving the same car since 2010 and I just now had to search “what was the car that had that Janelle Monáe song in the commercial” to figure out it is a Chevy Cruze, because the only thing I remember about it is that we sing the jingle every time she gives me a ride. (Incorrectly, because I also have Lyric Overconfidence Disorder.) And how many times have I tried to go home with the wrong family? I don’t know, because I can’t recognize my own car, which  may or may not be a 2009 (?) Toyonda (?) Eccentro (?). The man I currently think is my husband might just be some guy who was also driving a grey-ish hatchback and happened to cruise by the magazine factory at quittin’ time.

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So imagine the number of times I had to be picked by an Uber driver in a Tesla before I actually noticed that I was getting a lot of Uber rides in Teslas. Hundreds, if not thousands! (I’m not proud of the amount of Ubering I do, but sometimes, after a long night of being too lazy to take the bus, I just want to get home as quickly as possible to whatever family picked me up in a Toyonda most recently.)

The point is: something is up, you guys. It’s an electric epidemic… but one that seems to be distinct to Vancouver. On a recent trip to Toronto, I was bopping around in the usual unidentifiable gas guzzlers. The most notable thing about my ride-share experience there was a driver who spent nearly 20 unprompted minutes endorsing Boston Pizza. (Or at least I think it was an endorsement? What he said was, “You just feel every ingredient with your mouth!” so I suppose his meaning is up to interpretation.)

According to a spokesperson from Uber, seeing Teslas everywhere isn’t just some figment of my imagination (or, as Tesla’s diabolical overlord/CEO might put it, a glitch in the simulation we all live in). Vancouver Uber drivers do, in fact, drive the highest percentage of kilometres in electric vehicles in all of North America, and the majority of those EV drives are, says my Uber penpal, currently in Teslas. And while 71 percent of Canadian Uber drivers are EV curious, Vancouver’s noble chauffeurs are particularly incentivized by a love for the planet and/or a desperate need to get costs down in a city with Canada’s second-highest gas prices.

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But why not Chevy Volts? Or Polestars? Or whatever Toyonda’s EV offering might be?! These manufacturers simply don’t want Vancouver drivers bad enough, I guess. Tesla is luring them into its cars by partnering with Uber to give drivers vehicle ownership offers: $2,000 in additional incentives for buying and completing trips. (The ride-share company also has a deal with Hertz to rent Teslas at a special rate to drivers.)

I don’t really know how to talk about Uber’s specific programs that encourage drivers to switch to EVs without sounding like an ad here, much like I don’t know how to talk to the teen son I adopted this week after getting into the wrong car again. So maybe I’ll just say that the Zero Emissions Incentive lets EV drivers earn up to $5,000 extra a year, on top of the government’s Incentives for Zero Emissions program, which also offers up to $5,000 for a Tesla purchase or lease. That’s an inspiring chunk of change. If someone offered me $10,000 to overcome my Car Blindness, I’d be pretty tempted to finally splurge on that brain surgery (or flashcards, whatever).