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Orlando — Royal Transportation Group has made their first steps into going green with the addition of new Tesla vehicles into their diverse fleet. President & CEO Cliff Wright announced that the operator started offering the Tesla 3 compact, S sedan, and X SUV to their clientele this spring.
“No maintenance, no oil changes, no downtime,” Wright raves of the fully electric vehicles. “This is a whole different world.”
Curious after one of his chauffeurs recently purchased a Tesla, Wright visited a dealership and took a went for a test drive. He was instantly impressed with the vehicle’s handling and design.
“The car basically drives itself. It maintains speed in traffic, and you can control the distances between you and the car in front of you. If you’re driving at 80 mph, and the guy in front of you slows down, it will brake on its own. And it’s amazingly fast. It goes zero to 60 in 4.4 seconds.”
Wright was also impressed with the amount of storage the Teslas offer. He says that both the S and X models offer best-in-class storage, with tremendous amounts of luggage space for clients.
“These have more space than any other vehicle we have,” says Wright. “There’s no engine in the front, so you can put a set of golf clubs in there. The back has as much room as an Escalade.”
In addition, Wright says he is particularly impressed with the unparrelled safety ratings given to the Teslas.
“The Tesla S and X are the safest cars ever built. The X had a perfect score on the NHTSA safety rating test. The safety features are unbelievable. If someone drifts into your lane, the wheel shakes. Plus, the SUV can’t roll over; it goes half-way there and rolls back. It has a low center-of-gravity because its batteries are at the wheel line. It’s really next level.”
Perhaps most importantly, Wright says that his clients have been particularly impressed with the three vehicles.
“Once they get in, they love it. There’s a huge ‘Wow’ factor with the gull-wing doors and the panoramic windshield.”
Needless to say, electric cars will save any operator a great deal of expense when it comes to gasoline and oil prices, but the state of Florida is offering electric car users further incentive by eliminating fees on toll roads for those vehicles. Thus far, adding the Teslas to his fleet has been nothing short of advantageous for Wright.
“We were able to get some cool contracts with it for launches, and we’re currently working with Tesla for another exclusive transportation partnership.”
Visit rclorlando.net for more information.
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San Diego — To cap off its trifecta of springtime operator meetings, The Greater California Livery Association (GCLA) will be heading to Green Flash Brewing Company in San Diego June 13.
Attendees will be treated to dinner, plenty of networking opportunities, and education pertaining to both the San Diego region and statewide operations. There will also be vehicles on display, courtesy of Mercedes-Benz of San Diego and Zeeba Vans.
Airports have become a battleground of sorts as operators’ fight TNCs for both visibility and parity, and updates both from the San Diego International Airport’s Director of Ground Transportation Marc Nichols and about major changes coming to Los Angeles International Airport will be part of the evening meeting’s educational agenda. Nichols will be on hand to provide an update on the current state and new developments at the San Diego airport as they relate to our industry, while the LAX update will include pictures and maps clarifying the September 1 changes to the airport’s TNC and livery operations.
The association has continued its legislative and lobbying efforts at the state capital, which will be presented by the chairman of GCLA’s legislative committee Mark Stewart of CLI Worldwide. Stewart will discuss two pieces of proposed must-watch legislation for 2019, SB-625 (regarding passengers’ use of cannabis products in commercial vehicles) and AB-5 (regarding the Supreme Court ruling of the Dynamex case of worker classification).
The San Diego operator meeting will run from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., and pre-registration will be $40 for members and $50 for non-members (the on-site cost will be $50 for members and $60 for non-members). Attendees who have not yet RSVP’s can do so here.
The next round of GCLA meetings will begin with its SoCal operator meeting September 17.
Visit gcla.org for more information.
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Washington, D.C. — The National Limousine Association (NLA) headed to Washington, D.C., June 5-6 for its annual lobbying event, Day on the Hill, with a strategically intimate group of operators and vendors in tow. CD’s Publisher Chris Weiss and Editor Madeleine Maccar were among those who came from all across the country to meet with legislators and their staff to act as one voice speaking of the industry’s concerns.
The two-day event kicked off with an afternoon of education before attendees took to the Capitol June 6. Louie Perry and Todd Webster from Cornerstone Government Affairs, NLA’s longtime lobbying firm, provided government updates to contextualize the environment in which operators and vendors alike would be presenting their asks to legislators and their staff, especially in terms of how a deregulatory atmosphere has been punctuating the past year—as well as how Uber’s disappointing public performance continues to work in our industry’s favor, as it has highlighted the numerous shortcomings of the TNC business model and its complete lack of profitability.
“Uber’s low IPO has generated tons of negative press for them,” Perry explained during his portion of the presentation. “Uber going public has highlighted a lot of the Uber and Lyft challenges we’ve been talking about for years: the fact that they are not profitable, they misclassify and underpay their workers, and the fact that there are real concerns for the safety of their riders. I haven’t seen much positive press about them as a business since they went public, and that press helps reinforce the concerns NLA has been raising with legislators.”
TNCs remained at the forefront of this year’s top two issues as the NLA implored congressional representatives to both stand with the American worker and support transportation safety measures.
Both the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board have made rulings that can be viewed to legitimize the arguments that TNC drivers are independent contractors (ICs) rather than employees. The NLA takes issue with these rulings, especially since TNCs classifying their drivers as ICs denies those workers the stability and protection granted to employees. The association took a page from the California Supreme Court’s book to make its case, citing the state’s three-part test it adopted in April 2018 to determine the proper classification of an IC. Specifically, the case created a three-part test that must be met to qualify as an IC: drivers are free from the control and direction of their hirer in regard to the work they perform, perform work outside the usual course of their hiring entity’s business, and are customarily engaged in an independently established trade or business of the same nature as their hirer. None of those three criteria can be met, proving that TNC drivers are, indeed, employees. This reinforces the NLA’s longtime request for policy that creates a level playing field: Continued misclassification of drivers as ICs continues to create a competitive advantage for the TNC companies, allowing them to sidestep the expenses that traditional transportation companies pay to ensure they remain in regulatory compliance on all fronts.
Of course, the riding public’s safety is always the NLA’s top concern, and industry advocates continued to pound the drum of how lax TNCs’ background checks are, as illustrated by the horrifying number of unsafe drivers and criminal activity TNCs invite. They were armed with CNN-provided facts that ranged from how at least 103 Uber drivers have been accused of sexually assaulting passengers in just four years to how easily a former Somali military commander and alleged war criminal was able to get on the platform—and has been accepting passengers in the Northern Virginia market for the past year and a half.
Attendees took their messages, talking points, articles, and personal experiences to dozens of meetings with legislative representatives from both parties, including Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), who personally met with NLA President Gary Buffo of Pure Luxury Transportation and NLA Treasurer Robert Alexander of RMA Worldwide to discuss his role in crafting Sami’s Law in honor of the University of South Carolina senior who was allegedly murdered by a man impersonating a TNC driver. The proposed legislation would require additional safety measures to improve TNC vehicle identification, including mandatory front and rear license plates, a QR code on passenger windows, and illuminated windshield signs visible in the day and at night from a distance of 50 feet.
We’ll have in-depth and expanded coverage of this year’s NLA Day on the Hill in the July issue of Chauffeur Driven.
Visit limo.org for more information.
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