Waze, the largest traffic and navigation app will expand its carpool service across California starting next week. This expansion will include the key car hub of Los Angeles in its biggest scale rollout of the service owned by Alphabet's Google.
Both Uber and Alphabet are attracted by the fast-growing ride services industry technology established by the automakers such as Ford and General Motors. In fact, beginning on June 6, Waze Carpool app users will be able to find Waze drivers that are already going their way and vice versa. However, this expansion will be available only to date in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to Reuters.
"Carpooling takes density and doing it in a limited capacity, you can only learn so much," said Josh Fried, the General Manager and Head of Waze Carpool. Aside from that, Fried also confirmed that the company wanted to expand its app to Waze hub. "It's our first attempt to see if we can go big into a region."
As far as the records are the concern, Los Angeles has the most Waze users in the whole world. Drivers who accompany passengers on their routes share the gasoline expense and estimated at no greater than the general mileage rate of $.54 per mile. Waze is also planning to launch its new feature in Brazil by the end of 2017.
According to BGR, Waze Carpool currently takes no cut on any transaction within the Waze App. However, in the future, it will take a commission "when the quality of the service is high enough to warrant this," Fried claimed. During a test pilot in the hometown of Waze, which is Israel, the company took a 15 percent cut. This might the start of the commission they are talking about.
Waze's focus on the ride experience stands in opposition to what Waymo holds. Waymo is the former Google self-driving car, which is assigned to develop more on autonomous technology. Earlier this month, it announced a pair-up with Lyft to conduct a series of self-driving pilot programs intended to reach more people than current tests in Arizona, US.
