10 ms·

Announcing UberPool

430 points by jefftchan 12y ago

minimaxir 12y ago
I'm a little surprised at the choice of "Pool" instead of more conventional terms in the sharing economy such as "UberShare" or "UberContribute." I was very disappointed that UberPool isn't a swimming-pool-as-a-service.
- wise_young_man 12y ago
  It's a play on the word Carpool and seems apt to me. The Uber brand name is already synonymous with sharing as you share the car with the driver and whoever is with you and they need to distinguish this separately. I also thought it was something to do with bringing you to a swimming pool like UberCats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpool
  - gorkemyurt 12y ago
    he was joking
    - balls187 12y ago
      I was actually hoping it was a summer promotion for Uber, mobile-pool-as-a-service. http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111219033328/simpsons/images/5/53/Pool_Mobile.png http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111219033328/simpsons/i...
- yahelc 12y ago
  You joke, but I was sure this was going to be some kind of promotion involving swimming pools, like with their cupcakes, kittens, and weddings.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    My immediate thought was that they'd show up with a pool table on a truck. I think that would fit in perfectly with their other promotions.
- dilap 12y ago
  FWIW, I immediately guessed what it was going to be, just from reading the name. I would not have had the same reaction (I don't think) to your suggestions. So I like it. I think the mentions about it triggering an association to car-pool are spot on.
- MBCook 12y ago
  I agree. My immediate thought was something more akin to 'motor pool'. Maybe a way to pre-buy a group of rides at the same time or to the same place, such as getting friends to/from a party, for a discount. Or perhaps it could have been a service where Uber had their own fleet of 'special' drivers for 'premium' members to help with peak demand times. Of course, this sounds quite a bit like a traditional contracted car service. UberShare seems more fitting to me. Having read what it is the name makes sense, but it didn't inform me going in.
- ilaksh 12y ago
  OMG swimming-pool-as-a-service. You are a genius. I am going to be so rich. Thank you!
- wakeless 12y ago
  Here in Queenstown, NZ there's spa (jacuzzi) as a service.
- thechut 12y ago
  I also thought this was another Summer gimmick like the ice cream.
- prawks 12y ago
  "Uber" is already a pretty non-descriptive brand name, I think they prefer catchy-ness to descriptive branding.
andrewmunsell 12y ago
I'm a periodic Uber user and tend to use it later when public transit isn't running. This would be interesting, and if cheap enough, could be more convenient than waiting for a bus if you're in an area where they don't run frequently and it's storming, extremely hot, you don't want to wait around. I also just tried out Car2Go which costed me ~$15. The same trip from Uber, albiet at a different time of day, costs $9-12, and I get a driver. If Uber's pricing is even lower due to car sharing, then services like ZipCar and Car2Go may be in a little trouble. Of course, I realize if you're going to pick something up from a hardware store or whatever you may not want to use Uber, but for many types of trips using a service like Uber or Lyft is better and more convenient than driving yourself
- mikeash 12y ago
  This got me thinking: why are short-term rental services so expensive? Surely the driver makes up a large chunk of the cost of a service like Uber, so renting the car alone should be much cheaper. My guess is that rental services need a considerable oversupply of vehicles to make up for the uneven nature of demand. If I'm going to use such a service, I need to be reasonably certain that I can get a car within walking distance, and that means they need enough cars within a fairly small area to handle the 95th percentile of demand (or whatever percentile is appropriate). With something like Uber, the supply is effectively shared within the metro area, so sudden demand in one small area doesn't hurt. If the nearest Uber car is a five-minute drive away, that's fine. If the nearest ZipCar vehicle is a five-minute drive away, you are probably not using ZipCar today. I think this brings us back to the continuing discussion of self-driving cars....
  - chatmasta 12y ago
    ZipCar is $7-10 per hour on the low end of prices. Compared to Uber, that's extremely cheap.
    - andrewmunsell 12y ago
      That is if you're planning on being the car for an hour, and depending on the service, whether you're starting and ending near a parking spot. As in my example, if you're going to a hardware store and need a full sized car, ZipCar would be much better than Uber or even Car2Go because it's so cheap per hour.
necubi 12y ago
Sounds very similar to Hitch[0] which launched a couple of months ago in SF. It sounds very useful for long, expensive trips (e.g., cross bay, down to south bay) where the fixed cost of picking up or dropping off another passenger is a smaller factor. On an unrelated note, how is the form at the bottom supposed to update you when UberPool is in your area? Area codes are going to be inaccurate for anybody who's moved since they got their cell phone number. [0] http://www.takehitch.com/ http://www.takehitch.com/
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Also seeing as Uber is such an international country (159 cities in 43 countries), I was disappointed at the complete lack of i18n in the article.
  - mynameisvlad 12y ago
    It's their blog. They're a US-based company primarily (although not exclusively) focused on US consumers. You can expect that to result in English blog posts, just as you might expect a French company dealing with some France-only consumers to post in French.
    - madeofpalk 12y ago
      Sorry, my bad. When I said i18n, I didn't mean I expected them to post in other languages, but I expected them to mention geographical availabilities and what not.
      - mynameisvlad 12y ago
        Ah, gotcha. Didn't they say the plan to expand on August 15th? I'd assume they'd be announcing the availability outside of the SF private beta then.
- ngoel36 12y ago
  My guess is that they'll first just correlate it numbers from their database...
totalrobe 12y ago
What happens if you are requesting a ride and have a friend or two with you? UI could get a little complicated. And will they charge extra now if there is more than one rider?
- singlow 12y ago
  If you are all starting and ending at the same location it is cheaper to do a single fare.
  - badusername 12y ago
    Seems like you can split the fare with everyone that's riding. https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-split-a-fare-with-a-friend- https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-s...
    - prezjordan 12y ago
      > there is a $0.25 fare split fee for each participant. We just use Venmo :)
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
keeptrying 12y ago
This is obviously a data grab. Also has the potential to kill their own service. Very smart.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Data grab? How would this give them any more data than they already have? What extra data?
dojomouse 12y ago
We're building a similar service at Teleport, and recently ran a few numbers on the benefits of this sort of trip sharing assuming large scale and self driving EV's. Really can change the entire transport experience in cities - cleaner, faster, safer, cheaper. http://teleprt.com/50-cities/ http://teleprt.com/50-cities/
bluthru 12y ago
It would be interesting if Uber quantified carbon requirements per passenger mile and used this rating to encourage users to share rides. Uber users could get benefits or discounts for being green.
- chatmasta 12y ago
  Yes, I came here to post this. Uber could accrue some nice PR by reporting aggregate statistics in terms of Co2 saved, dollars saved, etc. They could also report those stats on an individual level. Still, these calculations could be pretty difficult. There are a lot of unknown variables. What was each customer's alternative mode of transport? Did the customer actually have a car before? Etc. Re: your incentive point, I'm not sure how that would work with emissions since it would basically just be "who drives the most," but I could see Uber promoting some incentive programs to get people to sell their car. They could even buy cars from people, in exchange for cash and/or uber credits, then repurpose those cars as uber vehicles.
velocitypsycho 12y ago
Now if this worked for my commute, that would be amazing. Would take it in an instant when the trains were far apart.
philmcc 12y ago
re: beta signup. How will they know if I'm in their area? I wonder if they cross-referencing my phone # with my existing Uber account.
jljljl 12y ago
People have talked about Uber as a way to reduce pollution and wasteful driving, and the limits of Uber's ability to do so since it still needs to address peak usage. If they make this work, the Uber could turn out to be a huge environmental boon, reducing both the number of cards manufactured as well as fuel and road usage. Hope it works...
welder 12y ago
Ride-sharing that can actually work!
jlas 12y ago
There's some weird styling going on in the "Mobile Number" input box: http://i.imgur.com/bSG9eKx.png http://i.imgur.com/bSG9eKx.png
- mayneack 12y ago
  Same on desktop chromium browser + ubuntu 14.04
- TOMDM 12y ago
  I've got the same thing on ChromeOS
untog 12y ago
A lot of people have tried this idea before, but they've never had the infrastructure or users to pull it off. Uber definitely has the infrastructure, but I suppose time will tell whether enough users sign up for it. Imagined future scenario, though: UberPool Buses. At the right peak times it could work, but I wouldn't like to use it in New York.
coldcode 12y ago
I wonder how well this would work in a less concentrated city than SF. Uber doesn't even go to my house (S of an interstate in DFW area) though I don't know why; maybe it's a volume problem which would make pooling even less likely.
msoad 12y ago
There is a car sharing service in France called Blah Blah. Passengers have rated "Blah" so you don't have to share ride with people who speak less or more than you usually. http://www.blablacar.com/ http://www.blablacar.com/
- megablast 12y ago
  Car sharing services in France are incredibly popular, everyone uses them. This is partly because the government has a monopoly and keeps the trains expensive, and stops buses from running. In the UK, buses are the way to go, you get very cheap buses if you book in advance.
  - makomk 12y ago
    UK buses may be cheap for long-distance travel, but outside of London they're pretty expensive for short distances, often more expensive than sharing a taxi with even one other person.
  - akgerber 12y ago
    Buses in the US are cheap, but our government monopoly rail service is even more expensive and even slower— NYC to DC is shorter than Paris to Lyon, but costs for a ticket a week out are higher for the low-speed Northeast Regional than the TGV, and our low-speed high-speed train, the Acela, costs more than twice as much as the TGV.
    - superuser2 12y ago
      How do private corporations build rail infrastructure without government? Wouldn't you need to negotiate with tens of thousands of private property owners, such that one holdout would be enough to kill the project? How is this possible without eminent domain?
- eric_khun 12y ago
  They raised $100M few weeks ago to expand http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/01/blablacar-raises-a-massive-100-million-round-to-create-a-global-ride-sharing-network/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/01/blablacar-raises-a-massive-...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dk8996 12y ago
Where can I bet that Google will buy Uber and make self-driving Uber cars? (I am not joking, do people know where I can place a bet on this?)
- vikramhaer 12y ago
  Google ventures invested $258M in Uber about a year ago, I'd say it's highly likely that if self-driving cars pan out, there'll be an Uber fleet of them.
- up_and_up 12y ago
  Predict the acquisition on mergerize.com: http://mergerize.com http://mergerize.com. Just include the target price and date.
- reustle 12y ago
  They already have! http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/ *Note the date
- mrcwinn 12y ago
  Oh, there's not a chance. Google's already invested quite a bit in Uber. Their exit is an IPO, not another investment. Private investment for startups is like a game of hot potato. Investors want to toss the potato to whomever will pay more. The public market is the last person to throw it to, and the valuation of Uber necessitates it.
up_and_up 12y ago
Shared taxis have existed for long time. This is just optimized with the iPhone app. It's really time vs money. You are paying less but it will likely be longer trip since the other rider is not likely going to your exact location.
johnvschmitt 12y ago
With all the data, carpooling/sharing a ride is great. But please, the phrase "game changer" is horribly overused today & diluted.
jbarham 12y ago
Every time I read about Uber I wonder who the target market is. Then I remember that as a father of three young boys our car has three car-seats in the back row, a CD in the CD player and more in the glovebox to keep the boys quiet, snacks in the center console to placate them when they're hungry, and a stroller in the trunk. And then I realize that Uber is made by and for young, single, childless people with lots of money who live in SF and NY.
- ladon86 12y ago
  And soon everyone else who doesn't have young kids, and then ultimately you: riding in the back of a far safer self-driving car. You will be able to give your full attention to your children instead of having them distract you from the road. In the future it might seem downright irresponsible to drive your children yourself. Sure you'll drive for fun sometimes, but not with the kids in the back.
  - empressplay 12y ago
    Despite your safety argument, couples with young children will be by far the last consumers to use self-driving cars. Parents do plenty of horribly "unsafe" things with their kids, but the point is _they_ do them -- they aren't going to pass the responsibility for their children's lives on to a computer willingly. Heck, I've known people who refused to take their children on driverless trains, they sure won't put them into a driverless car.
- anywhichway 12y ago
  Or just anywhere people take taxis, like when going to the airport, after a night of drinking, or on vacation without your car. If they can beat the normal cost of car ownership they could even take over commuting. Household will likely still need a car for kid transport and road trips, bit maybe not a second car. Anyone taking public transportation can easily augment it with uber for times when buses are less frequent.
- prawn 12y ago
  Why does the target market need to be young, single and childless? It would work for couples without kids, or parents with kids who've left home or are being left with a sitter. Or families where the children can go 30 minutes without needing food or entertainment. Or older people who aren't keen to drive in a city or deal with parking. Obviously those with young children specifically are in a different position and that's likely to be hard to address. You'll have a particular pram/stroller you use and specific snacks. You're more likely to be tied to your car if you don't want to be packing and unpacking each time. I get it - I have a car with a car seat for a 2yo. But there are also loads of times I'd use an Uber service alone or with my partner or even with a child if it were prevalent in my city.
dkarapetyan 12y ago
Is uber trying to eat its own tail?
soheil 12y ago
Almost in every single other country this has always been the way to ride a taxi. "This is also a bold social experiment." come on! They're making it sound like they discovered nuclear fusion.
- stbtrax 12y ago
  How do people organize cab shares in other countries?
  - pyvpx 12y ago
    "are you going in the same direction? would you like to split cab fare?" is usually how it goes, depending on the local dialect.
  - vjvj 12y ago
    Songthaew
  - laurent123456 12y ago
    In some small towns in Argentina, taxis pretty much replace buses. You can hail a taxi in the street, and even if there are already people in, they'll ask you where you're going. If you are going the same direction as everyone else in the taxi, you can get in. It's actually very convenient and cheap.
- dcre 12y ago
  Well, it's new for a country where people are quite uncomfortable being close to strangers.
AVTizzle 12y ago
>>Even if we don’t find an UberPool match for you, we’ll give you a discount on your ride. That's huge. A huge problem Hitch faces is having enough demand-side riders on the market to make the marketplace viable [1] Uber is going to be subsidizing the demand-side of the marketplace until the marketplace matures and demand fills in. [1] http://www.crewlab.net/uberpool http://www.crewlab.net/uberpool
- jordanthoms 12y ago
  And they've just collected 1.2 billion to help them along with that.
- Vik1ng 12y ago
  On the other hand it means Uber has to make that money somewhere, probably the other Uber services which mean they rely on taking a big cut out of the fees making them less competitive.
prawn 12y ago
This could easily be extended to larger vehicles (minibus) plying regular and popular routes at peak times. Do a pick up from a few square blocks and drop in a particular work district. Could be more convenient than a bus and eventually approach the same pricepoint.
gwintrob 12y ago
This reminds me of Via[0]: "Shared rides in a premium SUV or Mercedes van. As fast as a taxi at a fraction of the price." All of the competition in ride sharing has been great in the Bay Area. UberX is sometimes in a price range closer to riding the bus or BART. [0] http://www.ridewithvia.com/ http://www.ridewithvia.com/
seliopou 12y ago
Seems like Uber will eventually converge on a model of privately-owned publicly-accessible mass transportation.
antaviana 12y ago
How soon are we going to see demonstrations of Uber drivers complaining about Uberpoolers taking their business?
netcan 12y ago
This is interesting. It's potentially a bridge into "mass" transit. Sam Altman's insight about his own (high end) car use and the potential cost of replacing it completely with Uber is one legitimate example of how they could expand beyond of the taxi market. I don't think it's impossible for uber to have a few hundred or thousand core users in major cities that spend $10,000 per year on Uber. That only really applies to a small group of wealthy individuals. But, the real big markets are usually nearer the bottom of the pyramid.
aluhut 12y ago
I wonder how this will influence the legal problems Uber has here in Germany.
- Vik1ng 12y ago
  Germany already has such similar services. http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ etc. Uber is still not legal, because it's commercial. And those services kick out people if they just do it for the money.
ricardobeat 12y ago
In case any Uber employee is looking: scrolling on this page is almost non-functional on an iPhone.
- stusmith1977 12y ago
  And on desktop too. Page up / page down keys don't work unless you focus the page. There is a scrollbar within a scrollbar.
twelve40 12y ago
I like the general idea but don't completely get it > just happens to be requesting a ride along a similar route > Uber from the Castro to the Financial District Isn't 90% of the time it's like, one person goes to the Financial District, and the other one will just drop off Mid-Market, or just a few blocks towards SOMA, thank you? So do you get stuck waiting until there is a person with just the same exact route, or how is this partially-overlapping ride determined and split? You detour a few blocks to the right to accommodate the "nearby SOMA" person? But what if the original person says, screw SOMA, I'm not paying or waiting for any detours, I need to get to FD on a straight line asap. Sounds pretty hard, matching millions of similar but different routes.
- bobbles 12y ago
  I know if the price was cheap enough I'd definitely be willing to put up with slightly longer pickup delays (considering that it'd probably still be faster than normal taxis around here)
  - netcan 12y ago
    I think you can look at it as (convenience + quality)/price. Different people evaluate & value those three differently. To get a customer that equation needs to yield a higher value than the next best thing. To win in a a market completely, you need to tick all three boxes. Better, cheaper, faster. Uber focused on high quality early on, the limo market. They beat limos for price and convenience (the competition sucked) and matched the quality. More expensive than taxis, but better quality (nicer car). As the network grew, "convenience" went up, fast pickup times. They expanded downmarket (lower price & quality) with uberXand to take on Taxis. I think this ridesharing/carpooling, if it works well might find an unserved niche somewhere between Taxis and public transport. A next step might be something close to public transport. Basically minibuses running something similar to shuttles between hotels and airports. Most cities have these. They are possible because hotels can coordinate. That's why they are more common between the hotel and the airport than the other way around. There are probably lots of other use cases that are just missing the coordination.
rottyguy 12y ago
Along the lines of reducing fossil fuel consumption and having just returned from a trip to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, I really wish the bicycling culture was better embraced in the States in the bigger cities. NYC has Citibike which I find fantastic! But DC doesn't have the density of bike stations to make it convenient. How are the other cities? Miami, Chicago, San Fran, etc?
- samirmenon 12y ago
  Boston has a very strong biking culture, partly due to the large number of university students there.
  - epi16 12y ago
    Well, putting aside the endless war between cars and bikes... Several of my friends who bike regularly (hasn't happened to me, thankfully) have been hit by cars while biking, even though they were following the law and had all manner of blinky lights on their person. I think that while the biking culture in Boston is great, it won't be a good replacement for cars until there are more bike lanes and more careful drivers.
    - rottyguy 12y ago
      Copenhagen has curbed lanes dedicated to bikes and the people take full advantage. I saw several Christiana Bikes on the road while there (In fact one lady used one to drag back a loveseat sofa!) http://christianiabikes.com/en/ http://christianiabikes.com/en/
- waitwhatwhoa 12y ago
  Chicago's bike share is very well built out (IMO) and if you're in a neighborhood serviced by it (many low income neighborhoods just aren't deployed at all) you should be no more than two blocks from a station: http://www.divvybikes.com/stations http://www.divvybikes.com/stations
acabrahams 12y ago
I've been waiting for something like this to arrive for a while. In Israel and the West Bank, services called sheiruts act as mini-buses; they're taxis that pick up multiple passengers going in the same direction, usually for the same price as a public bus ticket. When buses are scarce, they are a really useful service. Could UberPool be like this?
- jfoster 12y ago
  Sounds similar to songthaews in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Aside from bikes, they seem to be the primary way of getting around and you just hail them like a taxi, talk to the driver to confirm that they're headed in somewhat the right direction, and it all works a bit like a dynamically selected bus route.
  - acomjean 12y ago
    This was common in Fiji. You stand on the road and flag down the van, make sure its going to the right place and pile in. Its like private bus.
- malandrew 12y ago
  In Brazil, mainly in Rio de Janeiro, we have the kombis (usually, but not necessarily VW Kombis) that are basically the same. São Paulo, used to have them, but they were taken off the road. Personally, I find them to be much more convenient than busses half the time, especially since the city really only responds to increases to demand around election time. i.e. a route becomes increasingly crowded to the point you can't get on the bus anymore. The problem gets so bad over a few years that you have to let 3-4 busses pass. An election comes up and miraculously the increased demand is met. kombis help alleviate these shenanigans.
Grue3 12y ago
For a service that entirely depends on network effect, they surely aren't making adoption easy. It's the same mistake Google made with Google+.
jfoster 12y ago
"Our friends at Google will also be joining us in the beta. They share our vision of a more energy-efficient world with less traffic congestion and pollution in our cities and are excited to be early adopters of UberPool." I don't quite understand what that means. Are they saying that all Google employees have access to the beta, or is Google involved in some other way?
- ohhoe 12y ago
  I'm assuming that google is having its employees participate in the beta so they can share rides to the HQ
  - free2rhyme214 12y ago
    Yes. It's a good idea since they also invested so much into Uber already.
  - wnissen 12y ago
    And also make it harder to distinguish a Google Bus from any other car.
- Wonnk13 12y ago
  Random guess: they may be modifying one of the routing algorithms with google maps. How far of a deviation can you make from a given route to pickup another group without increasing the ride time by X percentage type questions?
Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
Cab With Me[1] is doing this in NYC right now (head of biz dev here). MIT came out with a study[2] that showed ~80% of cab rides in 2011 could have been shared, if there was an easy facilitator. [1] http://www.welcome.cabwith.me/ http://www.welcome.cabwith.me/ [2] http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/03/how-system-shared-taxi-rides-could-transform-new-york-city/8530/ http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/03/how-system-shared-t...
- free2rhyme214 12y ago
  Lol be careful of Uber. They've been known to try aggressive tactics in the past.
  - Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
    <-- locks deadbolt
whoisthemachine 12y ago
The signup form doesn't work in firefox nightly :/
free2rhyme214 12y ago
I believe Uber will be successful with this idea and kill quite a few startups in the process.
vamega 12y ago
The First Name and Last Name fields do not appear to work in Firefox. The input is correctly entered, but the text is not Visible. Disabling the box-sizing: border-box shows the content. Anyone ever run into an issue like this before?
mrsuprawsm 12y ago
A buddy of mine already made and launched the exact same thing (without Uber branding, obviously): http://www.jumpinstudent.co.uk/ http://www.jumpinstudent.co.uk/ It was really successful; and he got bought out for a decent sum of money.
free2rhyme214 12y ago
The most exciting thing about Uber and Lyft launching these sharing services is not owning a car in the future. What do you think?
- jamesjyu 12y ago
  Imagine the combination of Uber and self driving cars. If Uber succeeds, they'll own a big piece of transit infrastructure.
malandrew 12y ago
Based one what time you typically leave the house and where you go everyday, I'm certain there's also room to mature this market by suggesting carpooling groups to anyone who has tried to use the service at least once: For all users who try UberPool at least once, find clusters where they all leave regularly at approximately the same time and head to the same destination. Uber can even ask something like "Do you mind if we collect your commuting data for 1 week. If there is low variability, find clusters and suggest routes. It think this could work bananas in places like SF-SouthBay, SouthBay-SF, and Washington DC where a sizeable chunk of people move back and forth in the same direction each day.
pastalex 12y ago
In NYC, a startup called Bandwagon has been doing this--matching users going the same way--for awhile now, and is pioneering a system for shared rides at the taxi lines of airports and events. This is what they did at CES: http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet-the-hop-lane-upgrading-the-taxi-line-by-sharing http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet-the-hop-lane-...

430 points by jefftchan 12y ago

I'm a little surprised at the choice of "Pool" instead of more conventional terms in the sharing economy such as "UberShare" or "UberContribute." I was very disappointed that UberPool isn't a swimming-pool-as-a-service.

wise_young_man 12y ago
It's a play on the word Carpool and seems apt to me. The Uber brand name is already synonymous with sharing as you share the car with the driver and whoever is with you and they need to distinguish this separately. I also thought it was something to do with bringing you to a swimming pool like UberCats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpool
- gorkemyurt 12y ago
  he was joking
  - balls187 12y ago
    I was actually hoping it was a summer promotion for Uber, mobile-pool-as-a-service. http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111219033328/simpsons/images/5/53/Pool_Mobile.png http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111219033328/simpsons/i...
yahelc 12y ago
You joke, but I was sure this was going to be some kind of promotion involving swimming pools, like with their cupcakes, kittens, and weddings.
- mikeash 12y ago
  My immediate thought was that they'd show up with a pool table on a truck. I think that would fit in perfectly with their other promotions.
dilap 12y ago
FWIW, I immediately guessed what it was going to be, just from reading the name. I would not have had the same reaction (I don't think) to your suggestions. So I like it. I think the mentions about it triggering an association to car-pool are spot on.
MBCook 12y ago
I agree. My immediate thought was something more akin to 'motor pool'. Maybe a way to pre-buy a group of rides at the same time or to the same place, such as getting friends to/from a party, for a discount. Or perhaps it could have been a service where Uber had their own fleet of 'special' drivers for 'premium' members to help with peak demand times. Of course, this sounds quite a bit like a traditional contracted car service. UberShare seems more fitting to me. Having read what it is the name makes sense, but it didn't inform me going in.
ilaksh 12y ago
OMG swimming-pool-as-a-service. You are a genius. I am going to be so rich. Thank you!
wakeless 12y ago
Here in Queenstown, NZ there's spa (jacuzzi) as a service.
thechut 12y ago
I also thought this was another Summer gimmick like the ice cream.
prawks 12y ago
"Uber" is already a pretty non-descriptive brand name, I think they prefer catchy-ness to descriptive branding.

andrewmunsell 12y ago

I'm a periodic Uber user and tend to use it later when public transit isn't running. This would be interesting, and if cheap enough, could be more convenient than waiting for a bus if you're in an area where they don't run frequently and it's storming, extremely hot, you don't want to wait around. I also just tried out Car2Go which costed me ~$15. The same trip from Uber, albiet at a different time of day, costs $9-12, and I get a driver. If Uber's pricing is even lower due to car sharing, then services like ZipCar and Car2Go may be in a little trouble. Of course, I realize if you're going to pick something up from a hardware store or whatever you may not want to use Uber, but for many types of trips using a service like Uber or Lyft is better and more convenient than driving yourself

mikeash 12y ago
This got me thinking: why are short-term rental services so expensive? Surely the driver makes up a large chunk of the cost of a service like Uber, so renting the car alone should be much cheaper. My guess is that rental services need a considerable oversupply of vehicles to make up for the uneven nature of demand. If I'm going to use such a service, I need to be reasonably certain that I can get a car within walking distance, and that means they need enough cars within a fairly small area to handle the 95th percentile of demand (or whatever percentile is appropriate). With something like Uber, the supply is effectively shared within the metro area, so sudden demand in one small area doesn't hurt. If the nearest Uber car is a five-minute drive away, that's fine. If the nearest ZipCar vehicle is a five-minute drive away, you are probably not using ZipCar today. I think this brings us back to the continuing discussion of self-driving cars....
- chatmasta 12y ago
  ZipCar is $7-10 per hour on the low end of prices. Compared to Uber, that's extremely cheap.
  - andrewmunsell 12y ago
    That is if you're planning on being the car for an hour, and depending on the service, whether you're starting and ending near a parking spot. As in my example, if you're going to a hardware store and need a full sized car, ZipCar would be much better than Uber or even Car2Go because it's so cheap per hour.

necubi 12y ago

Sounds very similar to Hitch[0] which launched a couple of months ago in SF. It sounds very useful for long, expensive trips (e.g., cross bay, down to south bay) where the fixed cost of picking up or dropping off another passenger is a smaller factor. On an unrelated note, how is the form at the bottom supposed to update you when UberPool is in your area? Area codes are going to be inaccurate for anybody who's moved since they got their cell phone number. [0] http://www.takehitch.com/ http://www.takehitch.com/

madeofpalk 12y ago
Also seeing as Uber is such an international country (159 cities in 43 countries), I was disappointed at the complete lack of i18n in the article.
- mynameisvlad 12y ago
  It's their blog. They're a US-based company primarily (although not exclusively) focused on US consumers. You can expect that to result in English blog posts, just as you might expect a French company dealing with some France-only consumers to post in French.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    Sorry, my bad. When I said i18n, I didn't mean I expected them to post in other languages, but I expected them to mention geographical availabilities and what not.
    - mynameisvlad 12y ago
      Ah, gotcha. Didn't they say the plan to expand on August 15th? I'd assume they'd be announcing the availability outside of the SF private beta then.
ngoel36 12y ago
My guess is that they'll first just correlate it numbers from their database...

totalrobe 12y ago

What happens if you are requesting a ride and have a friend or two with you? UI could get a little complicated. And will they charge extra now if there is more than one rider?

singlow 12y ago
If you are all starting and ending at the same location it is cheaper to do a single fare.
- badusername 12y ago
  Seems like you can split the fare with everyone that's riding. https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-split-a-fare-with-a-friend- https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-s...
  - prezjordan 12y ago
    > there is a $0.25 fare split fee for each participant. We just use Venmo :)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

keeptrying 12y ago

This is obviously a data grab. Also has the potential to kill their own service. Very smart.

madeofpalk 12y ago
Data grab? How would this give them any more data than they already have? What extra data?

dojomouse 12y ago

We're building a similar service at Teleport, and recently ran a few numbers on the benefits of this sort of trip sharing assuming large scale and self driving EV's. Really can change the entire transport experience in cities - cleaner, faster, safer, cheaper. http://teleprt.com/50-cities/ http://teleprt.com/50-cities/

bluthru 12y ago

It would be interesting if Uber quantified carbon requirements per passenger mile and used this rating to encourage users to share rides. Uber users could get benefits or discounts for being green.

chatmasta 12y ago
Yes, I came here to post this. Uber could accrue some nice PR by reporting aggregate statistics in terms of Co2 saved, dollars saved, etc. They could also report those stats on an individual level. Still, these calculations could be pretty difficult. There are a lot of unknown variables. What was each customer's alternative mode of transport? Did the customer actually have a car before? Etc. Re: your incentive point, I'm not sure how that would work with emissions since it would basically just be "who drives the most," but I could see Uber promoting some incentive programs to get people to sell their car. They could even buy cars from people, in exchange for cash and/or uber credits, then repurpose those cars as uber vehicles.

velocitypsycho 12y ago

Now if this worked for my commute, that would be amazing. Would take it in an instant when the trains were far apart.

philmcc 12y ago

re: beta signup. How will they know if I'm in their area? I wonder if they cross-referencing my phone # with my existing Uber account.

jljljl 12y ago

People have talked about Uber as a way to reduce pollution and wasteful driving, and the limits of Uber's ability to do so since it still needs to address peak usage. If they make this work, the Uber could turn out to be a huge environmental boon, reducing both the number of cards manufactured as well as fuel and road usage. Hope it works...

welder 12y ago

Ride-sharing that can actually work!

jlas 12y ago

There's some weird styling going on in the "Mobile Number" input box: http://i.imgur.com/bSG9eKx.png http://i.imgur.com/bSG9eKx.png

mayneack 12y ago
Same on desktop chromium browser + ubuntu 14.04
TOMDM 12y ago
I've got the same thing on ChromeOS

untog 12y ago

A lot of people have tried this idea before, but they've never had the infrastructure or users to pull it off. Uber definitely has the infrastructure, but I suppose time will tell whether enough users sign up for it. Imagined future scenario, though: UberPool Buses. At the right peak times it could work, but I wouldn't like to use it in New York.

coldcode 12y ago

I wonder how well this would work in a less concentrated city than SF. Uber doesn't even go to my house (S of an interstate in DFW area) though I don't know why; maybe it's a volume problem which would make pooling even less likely.

msoad 12y ago

There is a car sharing service in France called Blah Blah. Passengers have rated "Blah" so you don't have to share ride with people who speak less or more than you usually. http://www.blablacar.com/ http://www.blablacar.com/

megablast 12y ago
Car sharing services in France are incredibly popular, everyone uses them. This is partly because the government has a monopoly and keeps the trains expensive, and stops buses from running. In the UK, buses are the way to go, you get very cheap buses if you book in advance.
- makomk 12y ago
  UK buses may be cheap for long-distance travel, but outside of London they're pretty expensive for short distances, often more expensive than sharing a taxi with even one other person.
- akgerber 12y ago
  Buses in the US are cheap, but our government monopoly rail service is even more expensive and even slower— NYC to DC is shorter than Paris to Lyon, but costs for a ticket a week out are higher for the low-speed Northeast Regional than the TGV, and our low-speed high-speed train, the Acela, costs more than twice as much as the TGV.
  - superuser2 12y ago
    How do private corporations build rail infrastructure without government? Wouldn't you need to negotiate with tens of thousands of private property owners, such that one holdout would be enough to kill the project? How is this possible without eminent domain?
eric_khun 12y ago
They raised $100M few weeks ago to expand http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/01/blablacar-raises-a-massive-100-million-round-to-create-a-global-ride-sharing-network/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/01/blablacar-raises-a-massive-...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dk8996 12y ago

Where can I bet that Google will buy Uber and make self-driving Uber cars? (I am not joking, do people know where I can place a bet on this?)

vikramhaer 12y ago
Google ventures invested $258M in Uber about a year ago, I'd say it's highly likely that if self-driving cars pan out, there'll be an Uber fleet of them.
up_and_up 12y ago
Predict the acquisition on mergerize.com: http://mergerize.com http://mergerize.com. Just include the target price and date.
reustle 12y ago
They already have! http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/ *Note the date
mrcwinn 12y ago
Oh, there's not a chance. Google's already invested quite a bit in Uber. Their exit is an IPO, not another investment. Private investment for startups is like a game of hot potato. Investors want to toss the potato to whomever will pay more. The public market is the last person to throw it to, and the valuation of Uber necessitates it.

up_and_up 12y ago

Shared taxis have existed for long time. This is just optimized with the iPhone app. It's really time vs money. You are paying less but it will likely be longer trip since the other rider is not likely going to your exact location.

johnvschmitt 12y ago

With all the data, carpooling/sharing a ride is great. But please, the phrase "game changer" is horribly overused today & diluted.

jbarham 12y ago

Every time I read about Uber I wonder who the target market is. Then I remember that as a father of three young boys our car has three car-seats in the back row, a CD in the CD player and more in the glovebox to keep the boys quiet, snacks in the center console to placate them when they're hungry, and a stroller in the trunk. And then I realize that Uber is made by and for young, single, childless people with lots of money who live in SF and NY.

ladon86 12y ago
And soon everyone else who doesn't have young kids, and then ultimately you: riding in the back of a far safer self-driving car. You will be able to give your full attention to your children instead of having them distract you from the road. In the future it might seem downright irresponsible to drive your children yourself. Sure you'll drive for fun sometimes, but not with the kids in the back.
- empressplay 12y ago
  Despite your safety argument, couples with young children will be by far the last consumers to use self-driving cars. Parents do plenty of horribly "unsafe" things with their kids, but the point is _they_ do them -- they aren't going to pass the responsibility for their children's lives on to a computer willingly. Heck, I've known people who refused to take their children on driverless trains, they sure won't put them into a driverless car.
anywhichway 12y ago
Or just anywhere people take taxis, like when going to the airport, after a night of drinking, or on vacation without your car. If they can beat the normal cost of car ownership they could even take over commuting. Household will likely still need a car for kid transport and road trips, bit maybe not a second car. Anyone taking public transportation can easily augment it with uber for times when buses are less frequent.
prawn 12y ago
Why does the target market need to be young, single and childless? It would work for couples without kids, or parents with kids who've left home or are being left with a sitter. Or families where the children can go 30 minutes without needing food or entertainment. Or older people who aren't keen to drive in a city or deal with parking. Obviously those with young children specifically are in a different position and that's likely to be hard to address. You'll have a particular pram/stroller you use and specific snacks. You're more likely to be tied to your car if you don't want to be packing and unpacking each time. I get it - I have a car with a car seat for a 2yo. But there are also loads of times I'd use an Uber service alone or with my partner or even with a child if it were prevalent in my city.

dkarapetyan 12y ago

Is uber trying to eat its own tail?

soheil 12y ago

Almost in every single other country this has always been the way to ride a taxi. "This is also a bold social experiment." come on! They're making it sound like they discovered nuclear fusion.

stbtrax 12y ago
How do people organize cab shares in other countries?
- pyvpx 12y ago
  "are you going in the same direction? would you like to split cab fare?" is usually how it goes, depending on the local dialect.
- vjvj 12y ago
  Songthaew
- laurent123456 12y ago
  In some small towns in Argentina, taxis pretty much replace buses. You can hail a taxi in the street, and even if there are already people in, they'll ask you where you're going. If you are going the same direction as everyone else in the taxi, you can get in. It's actually very convenient and cheap.
dcre 12y ago
Well, it's new for a country where people are quite uncomfortable being close to strangers.

AVTizzle 12y ago

>>Even if we don’t find an UberPool match for you, we’ll give you a discount on your ride. That's huge. A huge problem Hitch faces is having enough demand-side riders on the market to make the marketplace viable [1] Uber is going to be subsidizing the demand-side of the marketplace until the marketplace matures and demand fills in. [1] http://www.crewlab.net/uberpool http://www.crewlab.net/uberpool

jordanthoms 12y ago
And they've just collected 1.2 billion to help them along with that.
Vik1ng 12y ago
On the other hand it means Uber has to make that money somewhere, probably the other Uber services which mean they rely on taking a big cut out of the fees making them less competitive.

prawn 12y ago

This could easily be extended to larger vehicles (minibus) plying regular and popular routes at peak times. Do a pick up from a few square blocks and drop in a particular work district. Could be more convenient than a bus and eventually approach the same pricepoint.

gwintrob 12y ago

This reminds me of Via[0]: "Shared rides in a premium SUV or Mercedes van. As fast as a taxi at a fraction of the price." All of the competition in ride sharing has been great in the Bay Area. UberX is sometimes in a price range closer to riding the bus or BART. [0] http://www.ridewithvia.com/ http://www.ridewithvia.com/

seliopou 12y ago

Seems like Uber will eventually converge on a model of privately-owned publicly-accessible mass transportation.

antaviana 12y ago

How soon are we going to see demonstrations of Uber drivers complaining about Uberpoolers taking their business?

netcan 12y ago

This is interesting. It's potentially a bridge into "mass" transit. Sam Altman's insight about his own (high end) car use and the potential cost of replacing it completely with Uber is one legitimate example of how they could expand beyond of the taxi market. I don't think it's impossible for uber to have a few hundred or thousand core users in major cities that spend $10,000 per year on Uber. That only really applies to a small group of wealthy individuals. But, the real big markets are usually nearer the bottom of the pyramid.

aluhut 12y ago

I wonder how this will influence the legal problems Uber has here in Germany.

Vik1ng 12y ago
Germany already has such similar services. http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ etc. Uber is still not legal, because it's commercial. And those services kick out people if they just do it for the money.

ricardobeat 12y ago

In case any Uber employee is looking: scrolling on this page is almost non-functional on an iPhone.

stusmith1977 12y ago
And on desktop too. Page up / page down keys don't work unless you focus the page. There is a scrollbar within a scrollbar.

twelve40 12y ago

I like the general idea but don't completely get it > just happens to be requesting a ride along a similar route > Uber from the Castro to the Financial District Isn't 90% of the time it's like, one person goes to the Financial District, and the other one will just drop off Mid-Market, or just a few blocks towards SOMA, thank you? So do you get stuck waiting until there is a person with just the same exact route, or how is this partially-overlapping ride determined and split? You detour a few blocks to the right to accommodate the "nearby SOMA" person? But what if the original person says, screw SOMA, I'm not paying or waiting for any detours, I need to get to FD on a straight line asap. Sounds pretty hard, matching millions of similar but different routes.

bobbles 12y ago
I know if the price was cheap enough I'd definitely be willing to put up with slightly longer pickup delays (considering that it'd probably still be faster than normal taxis around here)
- netcan 12y ago
  I think you can look at it as (convenience + quality)/price. Different people evaluate & value those three differently. To get a customer that equation needs to yield a higher value than the next best thing. To win in a a market completely, you need to tick all three boxes. Better, cheaper, faster. Uber focused on high quality early on, the limo market. They beat limos for price and convenience (the competition sucked) and matched the quality. More expensive than taxis, but better quality (nicer car). As the network grew, "convenience" went up, fast pickup times. They expanded downmarket (lower price & quality) with uberXand to take on Taxis. I think this ridesharing/carpooling, if it works well might find an unserved niche somewhere between Taxis and public transport. A next step might be something close to public transport. Basically minibuses running something similar to shuttles between hotels and airports. Most cities have these. They are possible because hotels can coordinate. That's why they are more common between the hotel and the airport than the other way around. There are probably lots of other use cases that are just missing the coordination.

rottyguy 12y ago

Along the lines of reducing fossil fuel consumption and having just returned from a trip to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, I really wish the bicycling culture was better embraced in the States in the bigger cities. NYC has Citibike which I find fantastic! But DC doesn't have the density of bike stations to make it convenient. How are the other cities? Miami, Chicago, San Fran, etc?

samirmenon 12y ago
Boston has a very strong biking culture, partly due to the large number of university students there.
- epi16 12y ago
  Well, putting aside the endless war between cars and bikes... Several of my friends who bike regularly (hasn't happened to me, thankfully) have been hit by cars while biking, even though they were following the law and had all manner of blinky lights on their person. I think that while the biking culture in Boston is great, it won't be a good replacement for cars until there are more bike lanes and more careful drivers.
  - rottyguy 12y ago
    Copenhagen has curbed lanes dedicated to bikes and the people take full advantage. I saw several Christiana Bikes on the road while there (In fact one lady used one to drag back a loveseat sofa!) http://christianiabikes.com/en/ http://christianiabikes.com/en/
waitwhatwhoa 12y ago
Chicago's bike share is very well built out (IMO) and if you're in a neighborhood serviced by it (many low income neighborhoods just aren't deployed at all) you should be no more than two blocks from a station: http://www.divvybikes.com/stations http://www.divvybikes.com/stations

acabrahams 12y ago

I've been waiting for something like this to arrive for a while. In Israel and the West Bank, services called sheiruts act as mini-buses; they're taxis that pick up multiple passengers going in the same direction, usually for the same price as a public bus ticket. When buses are scarce, they are a really useful service. Could UberPool be like this?

jfoster 12y ago
Sounds similar to songthaews in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Aside from bikes, they seem to be the primary way of getting around and you just hail them like a taxi, talk to the driver to confirm that they're headed in somewhat the right direction, and it all works a bit like a dynamically selected bus route.
- acomjean 12y ago
  This was common in Fiji. You stand on the road and flag down the van, make sure its going to the right place and pile in. Its like private bus.
malandrew 12y ago
In Brazil, mainly in Rio de Janeiro, we have the kombis (usually, but not necessarily VW Kombis) that are basically the same. São Paulo, used to have them, but they were taken off the road. Personally, I find them to be much more convenient than busses half the time, especially since the city really only responds to increases to demand around election time. i.e. a route becomes increasingly crowded to the point you can't get on the bus anymore. The problem gets so bad over a few years that you have to let 3-4 busses pass. An election comes up and miraculously the increased demand is met. kombis help alleviate these shenanigans.

Grue3 12y ago

For a service that entirely depends on network effect, they surely aren't making adoption easy. It's the same mistake Google made with Google+.

jfoster 12y ago

"Our friends at Google will also be joining us in the beta. They share our vision of a more energy-efficient world with less traffic congestion and pollution in our cities and are excited to be early adopters of UberPool." I don't quite understand what that means. Are they saying that all Google employees have access to the beta, or is Google involved in some other way?

ohhoe 12y ago
I'm assuming that google is having its employees participate in the beta so they can share rides to the HQ
- free2rhyme214 12y ago
  Yes. It's a good idea since they also invested so much into Uber already.
- wnissen 12y ago
  And also make it harder to distinguish a Google Bus from any other car.
Wonnk13 12y ago
Random guess: they may be modifying one of the routing algorithms with google maps. How far of a deviation can you make from a given route to pickup another group without increasing the ride time by X percentage type questions?

Disruptive_Dave 12y ago

Cab With Me[1] is doing this in NYC right now (head of biz dev here). MIT came out with a study[2] that showed ~80% of cab rides in 2011 could have been shared, if there was an easy facilitator. [1] http://www.welcome.cabwith.me/ http://www.welcome.cabwith.me/ [2] http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/03/how-system-shared-taxi-rides-could-transform-new-york-city/8530/ http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/03/how-system-shared-t...

free2rhyme214 12y ago
Lol be careful of Uber. They've been known to try aggressive tactics in the past.
- Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
  <-- locks deadbolt

whoisthemachine 12y ago

The signup form doesn't work in firefox nightly :/

free2rhyme214 12y ago

I believe Uber will be successful with this idea and kill quite a few startups in the process.

vamega 12y ago

The First Name and Last Name fields do not appear to work in Firefox. The input is correctly entered, but the text is not Visible. Disabling the box-sizing: border-box shows the content. Anyone ever run into an issue like this before?

mrsuprawsm 12y ago

A buddy of mine already made and launched the exact same thing (without Uber branding, obviously): http://www.jumpinstudent.co.uk/ http://www.jumpinstudent.co.uk/ It was really successful; and he got bought out for a decent sum of money.

free2rhyme214 12y ago

The most exciting thing about Uber and Lyft launching these sharing services is not owning a car in the future. What do you think?

jamesjyu 12y ago
Imagine the combination of Uber and self driving cars. If Uber succeeds, they'll own a big piece of transit infrastructure.

malandrew 12y ago

Based one what time you typically leave the house and where you go everyday, I'm certain there's also room to mature this market by suggesting carpooling groups to anyone who has tried to use the service at least once: For all users who try UberPool at least once, find clusters where they all leave regularly at approximately the same time and head to the same destination. Uber can even ask something like "Do you mind if we collect your commuting data for 1 week. If there is low variability, find clusters and suggest routes. It think this could work bananas in places like SF-SouthBay, SouthBay-SF, and Washington DC where a sizeable chunk of people move back and forth in the same direction each day.

pastalex 12y ago

In NYC, a startup called Bandwagon has been doing this--matching users going the same way--for awhile now, and is pioneering a system for shared rides at the taxi lines of airports and events. This is what they did at CES: http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet-the-hop-lane-upgrading-the-taxi-line-by-sharing http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet-the-hop-lane-...