Carpool Mobility

Idea: After we moved to the city for our studies and didn’t have our own car as students, we looked around for ways to get a car relatively quickly and cheaply, especially in the beginning. At first, it was about carrying furniture, a little later about trips with our friends and also about transporting a weekly shopping. Unfortunately, we did not find a suitable, flexible and comfortable solution. This was mainly a result of the fact that already existing solutions, such as a rental car, were often not affordable for us as students. Unfortunately, car sharing solutions offered were too far away from our apartment and too busy to offer the desired comfort and flexibility. As an environmentally conscious and sustainability-minded generation, it was also a thorn in our side that existing solutions increased the number of cars on the road as they bought them new and then made them available to their customers.

Problem: After we did not find what we were looking for, we decided to develop this solution ourselves in order to offer a new form of mobility that is affordable, comfortable and flexible. (Our solution will solve all the problems mentioned above.) Our solution will mainly benefit students and young professionals up to 30.  This target group, to which we also belong, prioritises exactly the factors listed above when choosing their mobility and is already familiar with solutions that simply lead to a mobility solution via the push of a button within an app (see Taxiapps, Uber, Lime etc.).

Solution: This is precisely the issue we want to address with Carpool. At Carpool, we are developing an app that allows residents of a housing estate to share a car. A resident who owns a car, but rarely uses it, can make their car available in the app whenever they do not need it. After the car is shown as available, any user of our app in the settlement can book the car in the available period. The payment is processed in the app and at the end of a billing period the car owner gets their earned money. The customers who rent the car are also insured for their trips by a cooperation partner, so the rental company does not have to worry about their insurance and the customers do not have to worry in case of an accident.

This has several advantages compared to previous solutions. First of all, the advantage of our offer is that we have a car-sharing offer, but the offered vehicle is located directly at our customers’ homes, which specifically solves the problem of the first and last mile. In addition, our method relies on existing, seldom-used vehicles from neighbours in the same residential area, which means that we do not have to buy new vehicles or worsen the traffic and parking situation. In addition, we offer car owners the possibility of reducing their cars’ idle time and creating a passive income. Also, the concern of interviewed potential customers that they do not want to rent their car to strangers is eliminated by sharing within the known neighbourhood.

Our business model and income will be generated from monthly fees charged by the tenants for our service and insurance and a booking fee for each booking.