Uber’s Co-Founder Launches Carpooling App ‘Ride’

Uber co-founder Oscar Salazar is using his experience at the ride-hailing company to launch a new iOS app aimed at making it easy for commuters to carpool.

Salazar opened Ride to companies in the U.S. on Tuesday, offering a quick and efficient way for employees at the same work location to connect and organize a carpooling scheme.

Ride, where Salazar is the Chief Technology and Product Officer, is a logistics company like Uber and Lyft. It even uses a similar map design layout and tracks nearby cars like Uber does.

But the service is much more niche; it’s focused solely on commuters and carpooling and it wants to create efficiency there, particularly in places where public transportation is not readily available. It works by matching a company’s employees — people who likely have their own cars but want to save money by riding together — with coworkers who share similar commutes.

After signing up to use Ride, businesses need to then put the word out to their employees. Once enough interest has been generated, everyone inputs their home address, what kind of car they drive, and whether they prefer to be a driver or a rider. After that, the app does its magic, automatically organizing workers into different groups while also generating efficient routes for the designated drivers.

A very helpful feature of the service is that if there’s a particularly large number of workers living along a single route, Ride can sort you out with a larger vehicle.

While the concept of carpooling is certainly nothing new, the folks at Ride hope its app, and the algorithms that power it, will make it easier to sort out ride-sharing schedules among a company’s workforce.

Source: Digital Trends