A powerhouse of Silicon Valley talent from Tesla, Uber and Facebook named Argo Corporation (ARGH-X) is bringing an all-electric, door-to-door transit model to Canada to complement buses and trains.

Canadian co-founders Praveen Arichandran, Qamar Qureshi and Sisun Lee formed a service that operates similar to a taxi or rideshare app, where users can call a car to pick them up and drop them off. The difference is Argo's service will be integrated with municipal public transit. Users would pay a fixed public transit fee and trained, uniformed Argo drivers will move passengers using only electric vehicles (EVs).

In the spring, the Toronto-based company plans to debut its municipal service named Argo City in Bradford West Gwillimbury, a town north of Toronto. As the contracted transit provider, it will match the schedule of local buses and the regional transit service called GO Transit, aiming for seamless transfers.

Arichandran, who played a part in Facebook’s growth in Asia and served as director of growth for Tesla, said the goal with Argo is to make a “modern, electric door-to-door transit system for cities and governments” so people have “a mobility option that’s more convenient than driving a private car but costs the same amount as a standard transit fare.”

Aiming to not only reduce dependency on private cars and slashing the time spent in traffic, he envisions Argo cutting carbon emissions and pollution.

Argo's all-electric public transportation

Chief product officer Lee, who like Arichandran is an alumnus of Facebook and Tesla, led Uber’s growth in Southeast Asia. Qureshi, co-CEO alongside Arichandran, has a background in educational technology and last served as president and CFO of Knowledgehook.

The three are looking to build a new breed of transit system that overcomes social barriers. Affordable, accessible mobility grants access to jobs, healthcare and education, Arichandran observed. But as urbanization and car ownership ramps up, traffic will only worsen, straining transportation and fostering greater inequality.

Cities will need to invest in public transit that is “not just better, but more convenient than driving a car” to reduce traffic and support mobility, he explained. Hence Argo City.

Rather than driving a car or waiting for a bus, people can use an app to pay a flat fee for a trip from their current location to any destination in their city or town or book a ride with a phone call. The EVs will be wheelchair accessible and able to carry multiple passengers at once.

Argo City is made to be more flexible and accessible than a bus that follows a fixed route, which usually involves a walk to a stop and uncertainty about whether the bus will arrive on time.

Argo even has better economics over a bus, Arichandran argues, because a driver will only be dispatched when requested and multiple passengers can be pooled into one car, unlike a bus that must be on the road regardless of how many passengers are waiting.

"We're able to deliver viable and scalable economics that are competitive with existing systems by driving more people into transit and deploying the vehicles only as they're needed."

Though its operating style may resemble Uber or Lyft, Arichandran contrasted the gig economy model pioneered by the rideshare services to Argo’s drivers, who will be hired from the communities it operates in, using EVs provided by the company and charging those cars using Argo-built infrastructure.

Argo will be compatible with public transit, regardless of whether it is purely electric or not, Arichandran said. The path to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation will involve all kinds of public transit, no matter where they are on a decarbonization journey.

It will secure contract funding from municipalities as part of its business model. 

While he could not give any hard data on how much time Argo will shave off a trip compared to public transit or a car, Arichandran said the company is targeting a wait time in the scale of minutes. Argo will also track carbon reductions from its service.

In schools and Bradford West Gwillimbury

Argo’s first service launched in September 2024 for private schools in the Greater Toronto Area — named Argo School.

“Parents have a seamless experience to track the students, which increases reliability . . . Students are effectively able to have just a much more positive and reliable and predictable transportation experience to and from school,” Arichandran said about Argo School.

The project has been such a success it has been highlighted on some schools’ promotional material as a perk, he added.

Bradford West Gwillimbury is the first deployment of Argo City in a public transit setting. Argo, the co-president said, needed a strong partner, and the town extended a welcome hand. Bradford West Gwillimbury is led by an “incredibly forward-thinking and innovative” city council and mayor, Arichandran said, leading to the collaboration.

A typical cash transit fee in Bradford West Gwillimbury for passengers aged five and up is $3, an Argo spokesperson said.

Argo City will be a part of the town’s transit system and align with regional connectors like GO Transit. If someone needs to commute to Toronto, for example, Argo City will schedule rides to match a train’s departure so there is minimal wait time.

In active conversations with transit agencies and municipalities, Arichandran plans to expand Argo in more Ontario municipalities, with more announcements coming this year.