Google's Waze Jumps Into the Ride-Sharing Business

An anonymous reader writes: Waze, the online mapping company owned by Google, is testing a ride-sharing service in Israel called RideWith. The service will allow commuters to pay drivers for rides to and from work. This is a hard limit — drivers can give no more than two rides per day. If the restriction remains after the initial test, it could be a simple way to avoid pseudo-professional drivers, and all the taxi-related legal problems that go with them (see: Uber). "RideWith calculates a cost based on the anticipated fuel consumption and 'depreciation' based on mileage, and the driver is free to accept or decline the ride accordingly." One can't help but speculate about future involvement with Google's autonomous car project.

Comments

No money in car pools

[SuperKendall]

Will they go after the car pools next?

No because those are free. It's the presence of money in any form or amount that triggers the primal instinct by the state (and taxi unions) to control or kill.

What would be nice is a kind of Tinder for car sharing, where you could put in a starting point, and ending point - people could read your profile and see a rough distance from their own starting and ending points, and swipe right if you seemed like someone they would want to ride with...

There would be no money in that (for the drivers anyway) so the taxis/state would lay off.

=== carpooling

[jklovanc]

It says to or from work is one ride. It does not state that you can pick up only one person on that trip. This is exactly carpooling.

Re:Living Wage is mandated for, and desired by idi

[Nidi62]

By the way, you can't make a living wage driving full-time for Uber either

Hey guess what THAT DOESN'T MATTER.

The last Uber driver I had, was also a comedian/writer (Los Angeles). He didn't need a living wage, he wanted a part time job with a ton of flexibility to supplement income.

There are a LOT of people like this (including, perhaps you've heard of them, TEENAGERS).

Considering the safety record of teenagers, they are absolutely the last ones that should be driving a gypsy cab like Uber.

And as for the part time job thing, well, there are plenty of people that sell a little pot on the side or do some escort work on weekends, but those are still illegal, just as operating as an unlicensed taxi is.

Simple fix for ride-sharing/uber

[Nidi62]

This is the idea I came up with a few weeks ago on another Uber thread that would fix everything: registered destinations. A driver registers a destination for their trip, and only then are they shown potential "customers/fares/ridesharers/etc"-who have also registered a destination-along their route within a slight variance depending on trip length (driving across a city it might be a block or 2, across state several miles). They can only pick up a new passenger once they have reached their original destination and registered a new one or, if they had a passenger get off during their previous trip, a new passenger registers with an applicable destination.

This kind of system would ensure that you are in fact ridesharing, ie. picking up passengers who are going to the same general area you are or a place you will pass along the way as opposed to working as an unlicensed taxi. Throw in a "fare" based on mileage/depreciation/a little extra for your time as opposed to Uber's surge pricing and you get rid of the issue of people taking this on as a job because it suddenly is not worth the effort. You still get compensated enough to offset the gas and depreciation of your car that you would be doing anyway, and at the end of the week you might have enough money to go out for a good dinner or maybe even enough for a trip for 2 to the movies.