Drivers, riders, and supporters of all things Drover — these are unprecedented times. We have all surely been effected at this point by Coronavirus; people have lost jobs, entire industries have temporarily shut down, our personal lives have been drastically altered by calls for social distancing. This blog is purposed to serve as an update on the status of COVID-19 in the state of Tennessee as well as provide insight into the actions that Drover is taking as a company to enact precautions and best practices to prevent the spread of the virus.
We are proud to announce the arrival of Drover Rideshare to Gatlinburg, TN. Our dream is that that by bringing Drover to Gatlinburg, we will be able to provide the residents and tourists of Gatlinburg with exceptional service as well as create opportunities for people who want to make some extra cash by driving through the app. We’re so excited to get started!
We are proud to announce the grand opening of Drover Hub in Shelbyville, TN — Drover’s first retail store and customer service center open to the public!
In light of Tesla's phenomenal success, many car manufacturers are releasing plug-in electric hybrids and fully-electric cars. Volvo Cars, however, is taking this trend to a whole new level. Founded in 1927, Volvo Cars has announced intentions to build an electric motor into every car in their fleet by 2019 -- just two short years away. This transition will mark the end of an era as over the past century the company has powered their cars solely by the internal combustion engine.
In my last blog, I featured the Toyota Mirai, their self-proclaimed car of the future. In today's blog, we are going to take another glimpse at the future in discussing the Tesla Semi Truck. Although the idea of a Tesla Semi is still a whisper based off of a suggestion. In his Master Plan Deux, Elon Musk alluded to a "Tesla Semi". According to Musk, the Tesla Semi will be ready witin a few years.
The Toyota Mirai is the world's first commercially sold hydrogen fuel cell car. Toyota believes that hydrogen fuel cell cars -- like their Mirai -- are the future of automotive transport; appropriately, the vehicle's name, "Mirai", is Japanese for 'future'. Today's blog will take a deeper look at the Mirai, answer questions such as how much it will cost if you want to by one, how hydrogen fuel cells work, and how Toyota's newest addition to their fleet compares to Drover's favorite car of the tomorrow: the Tesla Model S.
Upon first reading the title, many of you are probably thinking either 1) What is an ELF? or 2) It's not even Thanksgiving yet, and they are writing about Christmas. Well, my loyal readers, prepare yourselves for a treat... Drover Rideshare is excited to feature Nashville ELF.
As I briefly discussed in a previous blog, the Paris Agreement -- the world's first comprehensive climate agreement -- came into force on November 4, 2016 (about 2 weeks before this article was written). 109 heads of sovereign states agreed to the agreement, including China and the United States. The Atlantic did a phenomenal job of summarizing the implications of the Paris Agreement, and I will first briefly summarize their points in order to contextualize the importance of this moment in history.
52% of pure EVs in America are located in five cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Atlanta (3). On one hand, that is really exciting, because it places these three cities as national leaders in accepting and adopting electric vehicles. On the other, it is a wake-up call to the rest of the nation -- our electric vehicle stock is disproportionately allocated in a few cities while it should be saturated across the country.
Our goal here at Drover, in essence, is to develop an environmentally-friendly rideshare service. To that end, we recognize the importance of the growing pure electric vehicle market around the world. As of December 2015, 1,260,000 pure EVs and plug-in hybrids existed across the world, a number 100 times higher than the world's EV stock (population/amount of EVs in the world) in 2010 (1). Pure electric vehicles are at the core of our current and future business model.
I think that I am not alone in saying that reading that tweet just leaves you with a feeling of pause. Pause to realize that you just read a piece of history. Pause to realize that, in our lifetimes, we witnessed one of the most significant advancements in automobile technology since the invention of the Ford Model T. Pause to realize that we just read the death sentence of the gas-powered car -- potentially within our lifetimes. Pause to realize that Tesla finally listened to someone and designed a Model S body style that looks different from a Ford Taurus
Until summer 2014, the family vehicle was a 1996 Ford Taurus hatchback in the 13th round of a 12th round boxing match with the US highway system. My mom’s philosophy was to never, and I mean never, walk into a dealership when desperate. Emotional buying leads to impulsive purchases. So, we actually started looking for a new car as early as January 2013. At that stage, my mom’s search was really vague. Her famous line was “a car is four wheels that gets you from point A to B”. At the beginning of our car hunt, I liked cars in a detached sense but I wasn’t nearly as versed in their vocabulary and models as I am now. Throughout the course of our car search, I fell in love with cars of every make and model.
When the car as we know it today was first invented, it was called the horse-less buggy, because they didn't know what to call it! They figured, well, it gets us around, and it is a buggy without a horse... We are at that stage with electric vehicle technology. We are calling them 'electric cars', the same way that today's cars were once called 'horse-less' buggies. However, just as ridiculous as 'horse-less buggies' sounds to describe today's cars, it's the same thing with electric cars.
Yesterday was a good day for SpaceX CEO Elon Musk! Musk, also the CEO of Tesla Motors and early founder of SolarCity, is a titan in the green energy industry and a true innovator in modern transportation technology. At 5:39pm, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral Florida. A mere 10 minutes later, the rocket successfully landed on a remote-controlled barge in the ocean.
