Ridesharing, a slightly more formalized system of carpooling, is something that never really caught on in the United States. I blame the FBI. For whatever reason, Americans prefer to drive their own cars or pay for taxis, fly, or even occasionally take busses. In other countries, especially in Europe, booking a seat in a stranger’s car to share the costs of a ride is becoming increasingly popular, both for long and short distance trips. In large part this is due to BlaBlaCar, a company with big funding that’s buying up competitors and building a very effective network of drivers and riders. Now in 22 countries BlaBlaCar is mainly on the European continent but they have recently expanded into Mexico, India and Brazil.
My first ever BlaBlaCar rideshare (in Madrid)
This year I started with 78 ridesharing websites in my spreadsheet. I hesitate to call them companies because in this category there are actually a number of non-profits and public service organizations. I found 14 that stopped operations, a few of which were bought by BlaBlaCar. Here’s the list of obituaries:
- The Car Share was a directory of car sharing services that covered Australia, Canada, the US and Europe shut down. I guess I’m providing that service now.
- Go2gether offered ridesharing in Canada, they launched in 2014
- Ridepost, a US based ridesharing business that launched in 2013 appears to have pivoted to a bus and shuttle booking platform for businesses.
- Carma launched in 2007 covering Norway, Ireland and the USA
- MeBuddie was an India based ridesharing service launched in 2012
- Coride offered ridesharing in the US, launched in 2014
- RideShare.us was one of the oldest ridesharing platforms in the US (around for 12+ years!)
- Rides, a Mexican ridesharing company was acquired by BlaBlaCar
- Carpooling, a European ridesharing company launched in 2001 is now fully integrated into Blablacar
- Gumtree’s Singapore site shut down and it looks like they stopped offering ridesharing in Australia. But they still have ridesharing listings in the UK and South Africa.
- Viadedo served the Paraguay rideshare market, launched in 2013
- Yebame offered ridesharing in Chile, launched in 2015
- Arcade City was an Austin, Texas ridesharing site launched in 2016 after Uber and Lyft pulled out of that city. They still have a generic website up advertising “peer to peer everything” but with no content so it looks like they got out of the ridesharing business.