Autopia is going electric!

I feel like there’s been rumors/armchair imagineering about this for a decade now, so I’m glad to see it’s finally coming true!

I’m also very curious to see if some of the driving parts of Autopia get automated with this updated? Every time I ride Autopia there are countless people who ignore the ride ops and park at the wrong station, crash into each other, stop in the middle of the road, etc. In general, because you’re operating your own vehicle, guests do just have a lot more freedom to “do something wrong” than they do on a normal ride, and I wonder if Disney is OK with this or if they’d rather implement automatic braking, automatic station return, etc.

I'm curious to see if they partner with an existing electric car manufacturer (Tesla, Lucid, Rivian, Fisker, etc...) to help with the technology, and whether that manufacturer uses Autopia as a testing ground for new features rumored to be on the horizon for electric vehicle infrastructure like on-road charging.

If true, this would be a massive step forward for Tomorrowland that's been stuck a decade or more in the past because of this attraction.

When my family visited Disneyland, my nephew (who loves toy cars) insisted on going on this a few times. My sister and I shared a car together while he was with his dad and we found it the roughest ride on the trip, constantly banging against the main rail.

Also, the smell of the place is something and the noise, I have no idea how park staff can handle it all day long. A change long overdue.

They're certainly not partnering with Fisker given how things are going for that company.

My hunch is General Motors will be interested in using the marketing opportunity in a way that Tesla (hates marketing) won't.

Electric Autopia is something that's long overdue, especially in a state where internal combustion vehicles are going to be illegal in a little over a decade. Unfortunately, the downside of this is that it likely means the attraction isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future, so any sort of Tomorrowland or Fantasyland expansion is probably off the table for now.

“Unfortunately, the downside of this is that it likely means the attraction isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future…”

I feel like I’ve been seeing more and more anti-autopia takes recently- why?

I get that Autopia takes up a huge footprint and isn’t an E-Ticket or anything close, but it’s still an original ride (albeit modified substantially) with a lot of nostalgic value for most park goers. I still hit the attraction probably every other time I visit DLR, and it’s a ride system you can’t experience anywhere outside of Disney. I’d be very sad to see it go.

Juan, here's my reasoning...

Autopia takes up over five acres of land in Disneyland Park, which is a very large footprint for a single attraction (for reference, most large attractions occupy at most two acres). Despite that, it is an attraction that ranks in the middle in terms of popularity, gets average satisfaction scores with most guests, and is only capable of serving around 1,000 guests per hour. While the footprint is shared with a couple other attractions (Disneyland Monorail and Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage), both those attractions are less popular than Autopia and the combined capacity of all three is still only about 2,400 guests per hour (for reference, most modern E-Tickets can do close to 2,000 on their own). Autopia is by no means a bad ride, I just think there would be better ways to utilize the space given the crowd and space issues of the park.

For the record, Autopia is also not a unique attraction to Disney. While none of the other SoCal parks currently have one, many regional theme parks have some form of antique car ride that guests can drive, including two of the parks in Northern California (California's Great America and Gilroy Gardens).

When I ride Autopia, it seems like some guests unintentionally park at the wrong station, bump into each other, or stop in the middle of the road despite the instructions from the ride operators. It can be a bit frustrating at times, but I still enjoy the ride nonetheless.