Revel launches Tesla ride-hailing service

Frank Reig, Revel Co-Founder & CEO joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss the company as they launch an all-electric rideshare service with a fleet of 50 Teslas.

Video Transcript

EMILY MCCORMICK: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Well, as more Americans get vaccinated, ride hailing is picking back up. Revel, the electric moped startup that started in New York, is poised to launch an all-electric, all-Tesla rideshare service in Manhattan. Here to discuss now is Frank Reig, co-founder and CEO of Revel. Frank, it's great to have you on. And I have to ask, why now for this expansion into ridesharing?

FRANK REIG: Emily, thanks for having me back on Yahoo Finance here. For us, going into rideshare is really the next natural next step for us. We started with electric mopeds earlier this year. We also launched our electric bikes subscription product to really just some incredible demand here from our users in New York City. We also recently announced our heading right into publicly available fast charging infrastructure. Our first site will be live later this month, right, in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. And again, for us, rideshare is that next natural step as we look to create an entire electric vehicle ecosystem in the cities we operate, like New York City.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, Frank, I got to hand it to you. Because, you know, as a former rider of the mopeds, everyone knew you as a moped company. And now I think it's pretty clear you guys are becoming an electrification company here. So talk to me about how this all fits together as you scale, how each piece of the business might help you grow rather quickly.

FRANK REIG: Yeah, I mean, Zack, it goes back to when I was on your show maybe a month or two ago when we announced our first fast charging station right here in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. You were asking, what is next? Why are you going into the infrastructure charging space? Well, it's really solving that chicken or the egg problem. Because if you're a company like Revel, you're thinking about how do we electrify transportation in a city like New York and do it today, not talking about 2030 or 2040.

And if you're talking about today and actually want to drive electrification in mobility in a city like New York and do it today, you have to roll up your sleeves, and you have to build infrastructure. But if you're going to build infrastructure, you also need demand for that infrastructure. So for us, is, we're solving that chicken or the egg problem that our industry has. There's no infrastructure publicly available for charging because nobody has an EV. And nobody has an EV because there's no infrastructure. So guess what, Zack? Revel is bringing both to market at the same time. So that's the issue that we are solving for the electric vehicle industry. And we're excited to do it right here in New York City.

EMILY MCCORMICK: And Frank, of course, you are based in New York City, launching here first when it comes to this fleet. I'm wondering what your expansion plans are because it seems like with mobility, and with ride hailing specifically, it really is all about capturing that market share as quickly as possible.

FRANK REIG: So for us, it's very similar to our moped expansion. It started with a smaller fleet in North Brooklyn in 2018. It expanded into more of New York City in 2019. And then we started to go into other markets, as we proved out the business in DC, Miami, the Bay Area. So we'll be looking to do the same exact thing here with rideshare, starting here with a fleet of 50 vehicles, proving out the business. And then we'll be scaling the business from there as appropriate.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and, you know, one key differentiator here, too, when we talk about ride hailing and the way that it's different than Uber and Lyft is, you're going to have these maintained by the company and drivers brought on as employees, rather than contractors, like we've seen with them. So why go that route, you know, in a break from what we've seen traditionally in ride hailing?

FRANK REIG: That's right, Zack. I'm glad you brought that up. Because it's not only an all-electric rideshare service, it's an all-employee rideshare service. And since Rebel started as a company in 2018, every single customer support agent, every single field technician, battery [INAUDIBLE], every single mechanic that we have on our payroll, they are an employee of Revel.

So it's the same exact thing here with rideshares, Zack. With our initial 50-car fleet, we will be hiring 150 drivers with TLC licenses right here in New York City. They will all be employees. They will all have access to benefits and healthcare. And the reason why, Zack, is because that is the way it does business. That is the way you need to do business in 2021 in a city like New York. You need to actually hire from the communities that you operate in.

EMILY MCCORMICK: And Frank, just thinking about your flagship moped business, of course, Lime just announced it was launching its own electric moped business here in New York City. I'm wondering how you think about the competition and whether there's enough demand to potentially support another entrant into the space.

FRANK REIG: I mean, what we've learned with the moped side of the business is that New Yorkers clearly love the product. There are tens of thousands of folks that live and work in New York City that use our mopeds to get around this giant city that has a ton of transportation deserts. So for us, there is absolutely room for competition.

I will also say, though, that our strategy, again, like I mentioned earlier in the call, is developing an entire electric vehicle ecosystem. We're not a motor company. We're not an e-buy company. We're not a rideshare company. We're not an electric vehicle charging company. We are vertically integrating the entire stack into one platform into one network for all of New York.

ZACK GUZMAN: That's exciting to see the expansion. And, you know, it's been a while since I've been able to hop on one of those mopeds, so looking forward to getting back there. But Frank Reig, Revel co-founder and CEO, appreciate you coming on here to chat with us today.