Ridesharing company InOrbis launched its ride-hail service for travelers going to and fro Calgary and Edmonton with their fleet purely consisting of Tesla cars. Meanwhile, company founder reveals reasons why Tesla is their choice of the service vehicle.
Rosario Fortugno, the founder of InOrbis, recently sat down with cleantech-focused website, Clean Technica, to shed details about the newly-launched ridesharing service.
Fortugno, an engineering graduate from the University of Calgary, told the site of the company's main aim which is to provide the "most convenient city-to-city transportation service."
One of the problems Fortugno wanted to offer solutions with is the issue of productive time being lost while in transit. He revealed how he used to spend 20 hours on average per week on the road, handling the wheel.
Tesla, meanwhile, has been speeding up its Autopilot system which now enables vehicles to travel 500 kilometers without human intervention.
Fortugna took hold of the opportunity and launched InOrbis. Development of the company, from software to logistics, took three years. Competitions such as Tesloop and Tesla Shuttle added more to the challenge of setting up shop.
Eventually, InOrbis was formed and has grown exponentially ever since. From 2015, the ride-hail company now has eight Teslas in its service fleet: three Model X and five Model S.
Their first route of operation was from Alberta in 2017, and this year, Fortugna is looking to further expand the reach of their service in as many cities in North America as possible.
"Our one-year roadmap has us expanding to 10 city-pairs by the end of 2019 including other Canadian provinces (BC and Ontario) as well as 1-2 US city pairs," the company's head was quoted as saying.
To compensate the growing expanse of the service, Fortugna told Clean Technica that they are planning to build a network of solar-powered charging stations which would not only provide juice for their fleet but for the public consumption as well.
With four full-time employees and nine drivers, InOrbis has already collectively covered 400,000 kilometers of distance traveled.
Aside from the current Model Xs and Model Ss, the transport firm is now looking to add more vehicles in their fleet with the Tesla Roadster 2020 at the top of their priority list.
As for the reasons why Tesla is the car of their choice, Fortugna pointed out to the low maintenance and energy costs attached to the brand. Moreover, Tesla is currently the only EV maker that produces cars capable of a long-range autonomous drive.
