Today on October 10th, 2017, uber has started uberONE in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is a premium all-electric shuttle service offered by the US-based company that invented the app-based taxi alternative. It is identical to uberBlack, but is equipped with Tesla Model S or Model X vehicles as the only premium fully electric vehicles that are available on the market right now.

Experience with uberONE

To check out how it works in Dubai, I ordered an uberONE this morning at around 8:05am. Initially, the availability was very limited due to the low number of vehicles and the high demand around that time. If I remember correctly, they are using 50 vehicles at the moment. It took about 20 minutes for the vehicle to arrive, as it was finishing up a previous ride near my location. Picking up was straightforward, with the falcon wing doors on the rear opening up for letting me inside being a very cool way to be greeted.

Tesla Model X for uberONE in Dubai

The vehicle was clean, had an almost fully charged battery and a friendly driver. However, the driver’s knowledge about the vehicle wasn’t quite there yet. He tried to do something on the touchscreen, but seemed lost and unsure how to achieve what he wanted to do. Being a Tesla owner myself, it is a vehicle that will require a little better training and understanding to be fully proficient in the vehicle’s operation. The driver was also explaining how they work with the challenge of charging the battery. They do not have a supercharger that they are using, so they park the cars and charge, usually between switching shifts among drivers.

The pricing is identical to uberBlack with the total cost for a 9.61km and 28:55 minutes long trip was 58.39AED. I think this is a very good pricing for such a service, especially considering it was a busy and generally more expensive time. Overall it was a nice experience and I will certainly go with uberONE over uberBlack in the future. If you’d like to give it a try, please sign up for uber using this link: https://www.uber.com

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