Last week we had the pleasure of seeing one of our current projects in the field of future mobility services going live. I am going to take the chance and explain the project a bit more in detail here.
car2gether is a new ride-sharing service making a debut in the German city of Ulm. The social media service is launched by Daimler and builds on a social network of drivers and passengers. Commuters sign up for a free account, enter the start and end-points of their planned journeys and share some personal info about themselves. car2gether matches up users according to their destinations and profiles and suggests a possible rate for the cost of gas etc.
The main difference to other services however is car2gether’s focus on ad-hoc ride sharing. Users can share and negotiate their rides on the fly via smart phone through a specially developed iPhone App and mobile website. An Android App will follow up shortly.
Just like car2go, a successful easy-to-use car rental program and one of Daimler‘s earlier pilot projects, car2gether is initially being launched in Ulm to test user acceptance and system viability. car2gether itself is obviously not limited to smart fortwos or Mercedes-Benz cars. However, the service provides easy access to the existing network of car2gos all around Ulm.
Intuity has been supporting the development of the project from an early stage. Together with Daimler Business Innovation, we worked on the functional and communicative concept for the service, as well as the design of digital platform/apps and analogue communication tools.
The launch of the project and the fact that a car maker is now extending its applied research into mobile communities pushed a little wave through the media. Here are some of our favorite articles:
As always we are very much interested in your opinion: what do you think about the potential of the project? Can you imagine yourself using the service? Would you like to see this happening in your city, too? Let us know!
THX for the post. I really like this project very much for various reasons and it’s cool to see all the great response in local and international media. As C2G is still at the very beginning – I hope that many, many people in Ulm like, join and use car2gether to bring the service alive.
Tolle Sache! Mobilität als Vernetzung verschiedener Verkehrsmittel ist der richtige Weg … Liebe Grüße nach Stuggi
This has been tried over and over again — and failed over and over again.
The biggest obstacle is critical mass.
While designing beautiful interfaces, did anyone do research on previous attempts?
Why will this time be different?
I’d love to be wrong! Please help.
hi dan,
many thanks for your comment. indeed one of the major hurdles is critical mass for such a service to take off.
the car2gether team and us have been researching other projects and tried to learn from them. we will see if the combination of car sharing (car2go) and ride sharing (car2gether) as well as the incentive/communicative focus on specific social groups and locations will help.
of course, technical coverage is essential, and mobile internet and smart phones are meanwhile becoming affordable and widespread. but equally important, and this is our conviction at intuity, are interfaces being easy to use, fast, and – of course – attractive;-)
by the way: great source of information on the subject at dynamicridesharing.org! thanks for putting it together.