The residents of Downtown Tampa, FL are now able to avail an affordable ridesharing option to move from one neighborhood to the other. This ridesharing service is named DASH (Downtown Area Shared Hubs).
To make DASH more appealing, exciting, and sustainable, the Tampa Downtown Partnership uses a fleet of 6 Tesla Model Y electric SUVs for the ride service.
A DASH ride can be availed at $2 per person and a pool of minimum of 2 persons is required for a ride. Maximum 4 persons (excluding the driver) are allowed to share a single Tesla Model Y ride using the DASH service. The rides can be booked using the DASH Tampa smartphone app for Apple iPhone and Android mobile devices (FAQs PDF below).
Downtown Tampa has 20 neighborhoods in a radius of 1.862 square miles. The DASH ride service covers all these hubs with a very affordable pricing model.
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor joined the official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday. The DASH ridesharing started regular service from the Thursday 12th October.
“How do we get our community from Point A to Point B in the most efficient fashion?” Castor asked. “The ‘first mile-last mile’ is critically important, and DASH is a great solution to that,” he said.
“As we continue to grow and all the seven neighborhoods of Downtown evolve, we need other ways to move within the core of Downtown—and this is a really exciting way to make that happen,” said Shaun Drinkard, Interim President of the Tampa Downtown Partnership.
The DASH rideshare service hours are Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The DASH Tesla Model Y SUVs were wrapped in yellow color and each car was given a specific license plate (DASH 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6). This color and DASH logo vinyl stickers on the rear fenders give these ridesharing cars a distinguished presence on the road.
As we can see in the video above, the Tesla Model Ys acquired for DASH were in different colors but wrapped into the yellow tint by Tinterz who provides their services in Tampa, Florida.
It’s not the first time we are witnessing Tesla vehicles as cabs, taxis, and rideshare vehicles. In 2021, the City of New York (NYC) put a fleet of Tesla Model 3 cars as taxis in the city.
Cab service provider giant Hertz also bought 100,000 Tesla Model 3s around 2 years ago to add sustainable and reliable cars to its fleet. Later on, Hertz also added Model Y midsize SUVs to the fleet as well.
DASH Key Facts
- DASH’s sleek yellow-and-black Tesla Model Y SUVs are a new sustainable, zero-emission way to zip around Downtown Tampa.
- Riders will use an app to schedule a trip between around 20 hub locations throughout Downtown’s seven neighborhoods: the Downtown Core, River Arts District, Channel District, Water Street, Central Park, West Riverfront, and Tampa Heights.
- The app will pair up to four passengers to share each hub-to-hub trip.
- Passengers who need a wheelchair-accessible vehicle will be able to request an ADA-compliant van using the app.
- As with any brand-new service, operational details may change as the system is rolled out.