Comment by tytso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tytso | Hacker News Reader

The really big difference between Waze Carpool and Uber/Lyft is that the driver is paid at most 54 cents a mile (e.g., gas money), and Waze will only match the driver with passengers for two trips / day.

So it is not designed to be something where the driver will make a living, but really just as a way for a driver to get some company, maybe take advantage of the HOV lanes, and it gets some cars off of the road to reduce congestion.

This has impacts to the sort of insurance drivers will need to get, since it's really no different from traditional car pooling. I would not be surprised if, over time, the system tries to pair people who have previously shared rides together for subsequent trips (unless either party rates the other as, "would rather not share a ride with this person"). Knowing that you are sharing the ride with the same person that you normally share your car with would make for a much better user experience, since people are, after all, social creatures.

This point is dead-on and the key distinction between ridesharing (or really, ride-hailing) and carpooling.

With Scoop, for example, all the people who Driver are just everyday folks. They're commuters like you, me, and the Riders they get matched up with. The economic incentives are like a bonus - where the real value is the improved time in the car and the time savings from the carpool lane (where applicable). And of course, other benefits around sustainability and parking that really impact and motivate some commuters.

It's fairly obvious, but this could use a tweak along the lines of: "With Scoop, for example," -> "With Scoop, my company,"

This instantly strikes me as more social than Uber/Lyft because you're not "hiring" anyone.

Hell, I bet users will even sit in the front seat together.

This. This is ride-sharing. A six year old can tell the difference between this, and a 1099-taxi service with an app.

I was interested in checking this out until you mentioned driver is paid at most $0.54 per mile. That really stinks for city travel where commute times are long and parking at the downtown destinations is expensive. There is no incentive for me to pick up a carpooler on my 30 minute 6 mile drive into the city where parking costs $26/day. In rush hour traffic, it'll easily add an extra 15-20 minutes to my commute each way to pick anyone up.

It would subsidize $6.50 of my parking but I'd end up with an extra 30-40m of driving each day. Perhaps it's better than nothing?

If picking up somebody adds 15-20 minutes to your 30 minutes commute, it's probably not worth carpooling in the first place... if you're ready to make that sacrifice for a financial incentive, you should use Lyft or Uber instead.

If you are going into the city anyway for work, you can drop off your passenger near a subway stop, and continue into work. The assumption is that you were driving anyway, and so the cost of adding a carpooler and dropping him or her maybe 3-5 minutes out of your normal drive.

You're right that if you need to go out of your way at pickup or dropoff, or if you weren't going to drive into the city anyway because parking is $$$, this isn't going to work for you. But then that wasn't the intended target audience. If the goal is to get cars off the road, and you weren't going to drive, but take light rail as the saner way to commute into the city --- then by all means, continue using rail or light rail for your commute!

This isn't something new. Scoop is already doing this and Lyft had carpool for a while before they shut it down.

The service certainly isn't new. But Scoop, Lyft, and Waze all have different monetization models. Waze is ad-funded, plus its traffic data provides value to Google Maps. Lyft takes a cut of the money paid to the drivers. Scoop is apparently getting funded by the employers and office parks where they are providing service. These are all different models, and the fact that Lyft shut down their carpool service indicates that it's not a good fit for their business model.

Did they shutdown Lyft Line or are you talking about something else?

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