Navigation company Waze is wading into carpooling with the nationwide rollout of Waze Carpool, a new app that lets drivers offer rides to people who are traveling on a similar route.
Starting this month, commuters across the country, including the Twin Cities, will be able to earn cash by picking up others with near-identical commutes. The rollout comes after successful pilot tests in Texas, California, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois, Nevada and Waze's country of origin, Israel.
Waze Carpool users will be charged a maximum of 54 cents per mile – the IRS reimbursement rate for travel by car. The company hopes to differ itself from services like Uber Pool and Lyft Shared Ride by limiting both drivers and riders to two rides per day. By emphasizing carpooling over driving side-gigs, Google-owned Waze differs itself from competitors in the ride share market.
Here's how the app works: Riders or drivers choose who they want to ride with based on profiles, star ratings, mutual friends and customizable filters such as gender, co-worker and proximity to preferred route. Payments are handled through the app. Currently, Waze doesn't charge for carpooling, but could do so in the future.
Waze originally launched its carpooling app in the Bay Area in 2016. After reengineering the product this year, Waze Carpool saw a spike in growth, increasing by at least 50 percent since last month.
Waze is the first tech giant to bring true ride sharing to the Twin Cities. Both Lyft in Uber offer carpooling features, but for now, they are only available in larger cities like Chicago and New York.
