Find Tinder lacking in electricity? Does Bumble and its rules for courtship engagement need more autopilot? Wish eHarmony was better at plugging into your emotional needs? Are you hoping to open up your relationship with your Tesla to include a third party? Worry not, lost would-be polyamorous electric vehicle lover, because we think there might finally be a digital matchmaker for you: Tesla Dating.
This new dating app under development—website here—promises to connect like-minded Tesla fans for the purposes of courtship. That is, if someone so far up Tesla’s, um, charging port can peel away from bragging to their friends about how their car “drives itself” to find a partner equally engrossed in their electric car.
Amusingly, the app’s creator, Ajitpal Grewal, told Business Insider the weird obsession among Tesla owners with their own vehicles is what spurred him to act. He figured why not connect people who couldn’t stop talking Tesla with one another? We figure Ajitpat never thought about the consequences of such ego-stroking—after all, what happens when these people meet? Do they simply talk over each other about how cool their Teslas are? What’s the driving range of a Tesla-on-Tesla date? Do these dates have some sort of semi-autonomous feature, in which the heavy lifting is done by a computer?
One thing is for sure, if that computer is in fact the Tesla Dating app, well, we kind of dig its sense of wordplay. The website touting the coming app blares, “The Dating App for Tesla Owners,” followed by “Because you can’t spell LOVE without EV.” Several sample conversations between surely fictional Tesla Dating app users include bio mentions such as “Looking for adventures and fun. FSD so you can meet me in the back seat…” This is a reference to the Full Self Driving feature, better known as Tesla’s current Autopilot functionality with the promise of more autonomous capability later, and the idea that the user and their date could hook up in the back seat of a moving Tesla driving itself. Another sample has a text thread between two Teslarati: “Your eyes are as blue and beautiful as the deep metallic blue exterior on your Model X,” followed by the response “omg [emojis] wanna zoom rn?” Yeah, barf.
Ownership of a Tesla appears to be a prerequisite of making it onto the Tesla Dating app’s roster of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, which, duh—who else would want to be matched with someone who won’t stop talking about their Tesla? Oh, wait, let us again reference the Tesla Dating website, which notes it is for “Elon stans.” We’re sure the icebreaker about how Tesla’s model lineup spells out “S3XY”—you know, what with the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and new Model Y—will be popular.
As for how the app functions, well, based on the provided screengrabs of the app in action, we figure it works a lot like Tinder. Instead of swiping, users hit either a big red “X” or a green circle that resembles an on-screen smartphone “on” button. Beneath a photo set is a Tesla-style rendering of each user’s car—it looks like those Tesla uses on its in-car, on-screen animations and its website—and a description noting the model. In smaller font beneath all this critical Tesla info is a short bio area where users can write pithy, flirty things intended to ensnare other Tesla people.
Features mimicking those of Tesla’s own app for owners are mercifully absent. For example, you cannot set your match’s climate-control settings for them, open their camera to see their surroundings while they’re parked (creepy), or remotely open your matches’ cars’ windows or sunroofs from afar. Wanna turn up the heat, take a peek, and…you know? Gotta do that the old-fashioned way, folks. Throw down some silver-tongued Tesla talk on your Tesla Dating match and let chemistry—not of the battery kind—take over.
