Why do carpool apps always fail?
For whatever reason Craigslist rideshare is still king after 20 years. And while Craigslist rides have been an endless source of adventure for me it's also sketchy af and I completely understand why most people would steer clear. I see that a ton of apps have realized this and tried launching competitors but they've never reached a critical mass and it's hard to find trips. What's missing?
Outside of some very high traffic routes, I don't think there's enough people going from close enough to close enough and willing to deal with the hassle that is other people. Exceptional routes tend towards less planning, I understand that in the DC area, you pull up to specific intersections to pick up a "slug" that's headed in their same direction [1], and I've heard similar conditions exist (or existed) around the SF Bay Bridge. There's no need for an app there, because there's enough demand for both drivers and passengers that you can just be there during the commute hours with no planning.
[1] http://www.slug-lines.com/slugging/About_Slugging.asp
BlaBlaCar is extremely popular, though doesn't operate in the US.
Trust seems like a tough chicken-egg problem for a new app to bootstrap. I wonder if someone like facebook could successfully launch a carpool service piggybacking off their identity profiles, like they've done with Marketplace.
I started a web/touchtone/sms carpool app called mobileride.com in 2005. It was a pretty simple app, where people would call or sms and use a numbering system to set trip from/to and then wait for a double-ended call from the server with a match. The first problem I ran into was that it was illegal to set a price or facilitate a financial transaction for a ride. The next problem was liability. IVR call time was around $.05-.25/min so I was on a modest burn rate. There were some other possibilities like charge numbers or advertising, but this wasn’t an immediate solution. In the end I had enough calls to burn down my savings, but not enough to make many real-time connections. My guess is that real-time user density is the real issue, and someone will achieve it. I shut it down with dreams of relaunching more as a lifestyle app like couchsurfing than a practical travel solution.
I used to take BlaBlaCar here in Central-Eastern Europe. It was pretty great, but the only reason most people use it is to take as cheap rides as it is possible. After several awful experiences and after my complaints going ignored I stopped using it entirely.
Over maybe a hundred rides, I can't imagine I've made the company more than 50 euro total.
If the price of fuel/travel continues to climb, I can imagine that might make it closer to being a viable business model. But human nature and other things being the way they are, I can't imagine anyone doing it as a sustainable business. It's a race to the bottom.
Uber does offer me to give rides inside the city, but the money never justifies the hassle. And the person could always be late, or smell super bad whatever. For like 5 USD?
I dont know. I do know cities in the Bay Area had designated casual carpool that worked really well for carpooling into San Francisco in the mornings.