Digital Verdure

Avego is a two-year old startup that plans to take carpooling into the fast lane. The carpooling space has become hot in the past few years, with a number of new companies cropping up that plan to use the web and mobile tech to make it easier to find and share rides.

Avego, a spinoff of Mapflow, has probably the most sophisticated technology of the bunch, with a nice iPhone app that lets you find drivers or passengers in your area and catch or offer a ride.  The company has developed an innovative incentive system, with micropayments transferred between rider and driver via iPhone.  Meanwhile, Avego takes a small cut of every transaction. 

I like this idea of monetizing underused seats, but the main problem I see with Avego's business model is that it's trying to change consumer behavior too much.  While it is technical wizardy to be able to see people in your area that are looking for a ride via iPhone... do you really want to sit inches away from them?  I think there are real, valid safety and trust issues with this approach. 

To get around these issues, Avego has developed a reputation and identity validation system, where drivers and riders rate each other and are asked to exchange a nominal transaction before beginning a trip.  However, these seem insufficient for addressing the understandable weariness most people will feel about riding in cars with strangers.  There's just a lot more at stake than buying a used book on Amazon.

iCarpool is another ridesharing startup, but it focuses on serving companies and organizations with carpooling needs for their employees.  For users, this approach eliminates much of the anxiety of riding with strangers. 

Like Avego, it offers real-time geo-matching and updates for drivers and riders, so if one employee/passenger is running late at a meeting, she can catch the next driver home and doesn't hold up others or miss a ride.

iCarpool is a great solution for commuters going to and from the office, but it seems to fall short for trips elsewhere or for people who don't work at an iCarpool company.

For those groups, which I think include most students, there is Zimride, which gets my vote for best user experience. (Just to be clear, I created a profile and played around with each carpool startup app and website, but did not actually carpool... I don't need to drive around that much!) 

Zimride is the brainchild of John Zimmer, a Cornell grad and former Lehman banker. Zimmer started Zimride in college, and as a former resident of Ithaca, I can definitely attest to the value of shared rides to and from NYC. 

Zimride is similar to other carpooling startups only on the surface -- it forgoes just-in-time carpooling in favor of a finely-tuned screening process. The site leverages Facebook profiles and networks, along with some clever reputation management and ride preference features, so users can get a good amount of ride details before committing.

Zimride will tell you if you have friends in common with the driver or other riders, let you see the driver's car size, smoking preferences and so on. The company recently announced a partnership with Zipcar and is also a recipient of a fbFund grant.

All these efforts are commendable though.  And here's hoping that they can change consumer behavior.  As Robin Chase, a founder of Zipcar, said in her TED talk last year, "we need to reduce C02 omissions in 10 to 15 years by 80% in order to avert catastrophic effects... in 10 years, fuel-efficient cars will reduce our fossil fuel needs by 4%. That’s not enough."