Ride-hailing industry disrupted with EVs

Aimed at serving users in dense, urban areas, Go360 uses all electric vehicles in a first- and last-mile pooled model to provide consumers a better and faster way to travel. Rides average $2.50 a time (up to four rides a day) with a monthly subscription. The all-employee drivers are always close by so the customer wait time is a maximum of five minutes. The startup is part of the premier accelerator UC Berkeley SkyDeck.

Go360 has been serving alpha riders (employees, family and friends) in a limited area in Sacramento since November 2019, and will now be offering the ride-hailing service to the community. The company has plans to expand to other Northern California cities: Davis, Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland, and eventually will roll out to other metro areas. Currently, Go360 has released a Rider and Driver app that allows its riders to use the service.

“Go360 is the future of on-demand transportation. We are committed to work with the power of public transit - creating a fully multimodal solution that gets people from home to transit hubs and back, so they can be the most efficient with their time,” said Sravan Puttagunta, Go360 CEO.

“First and last-mile pooling provides high quality, affordable, and (because we use all-electric vehicles) green transportation options to riders. By keeping vehicles in a certain geographic area, Go360 optimises for filling cars and picking up and dropping off multiple passengers along dynamically-computed routes, without incurring overhead. Our technology improves overall travel times while keeping costs affordable.”

For improved pooling efficiency, Go360 'blacklists' high traffic corridors, highways and on-ramps, allowing the routing algorithm to leverage the free flow of inner-city roads. This also increases the accuracy of the estimated trip times. It uses its Vision APIs to analyse camera data to generate information about traffic, curb management, pick up and drop off, to further increase the efficiency of its service. Long term, this infrastructure can be leveraged to power self-driving cars to operate in the same areas.

While other on-demand ride services focus on oversupplying the market with drivers, Go360 is investing in the quality of the drivers, the premium cars (all electric vehicles) and providing more predictable rides. Go360 drivers are company employees - paid by the hour, not by the mile - and with no service fees. They also receive company benefits so they comply with the new California AB5 regulations.

“Sacramento is the perfect launching point for new mobility companies,” said Barry Broome, President and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council. “Innovators like Anuj and Sravan are coming to the Greater Sacramento region because of the fantastic business climate, the wealth of talent and the California Mobility Center which will be the most impactful mobility initiative in the US.”

“Sacramento has invested more in economic development than any other community of its size in the country, and that leads to forward-thinking talent choosing our region,” Broome continued. “Mayor Darrell Steinberg is helping to make Sacramento the next innovation hub for new mobility ideas and we are excited for Go360 to be part of the tech growth in our region.”

As the company grows, it plans to scale its presence to connect cities together in a better, more efficient way. “Since we are starting in the Sacramento area, Go360 wants to make life easier for super commuters like the 80,000 people who travel the 70 miles from Sacramento to the Bay Area every day. Our pooled rides feed people to rapid transit street cars and the subway. This improves the efficiency of all existing transportation systems, reduces traffic and helps the environment,” said Puttagunta.

As one current user shared: “Go360 is the secret no one told me about. I use it every day to get to work and love the cars, professional drivers and reliability.”