Waze Will Soon Launch Unique Carpooling Service Across California

Google wants to help you arrange carpools for your commute. Waze, the company’s navigation and crowdsourced traffic information app, is reportedly expanding its carpool service to all of California on June 6 after several successful localized trials.

Waze’s carpool service has been around since 2015, but if you haven’t heard of it, it’s probably because the feature has only been rolled out in Israel, Sacramento, Monterey and the Bay Area thus far, according to the Wall Street Journal. Waze is already one of the better navigation apps, and it places particular focus on the community, crowdsourcing traffic and road information and sharing it with other drivers as well as Google’s Maps platform. With this carpooling feature, Google is taking that community focus one step further.

But while the premise might sound familiar, Waze Carpool is not looking to be a straight replacement for ride-sharing apps like Uber or Lyft. For one, drivers are capped at two riders per day, and will only make the federally mandated rate of 54 cents a mile — intended more as a way to share gas costs than as an actual side hustle. The focus seems to be on conveniently pairing riders with drivers heading in the same direction, rather than being a specific platform for drivers to make money, TechCrunch points out.

To use the service to catch a ride, you’ll need to download the separate Waze Carpool app — currently available for iOS and Android. Drivers who want to offer rides can do so in the original Waze app by opting in via a tab in the bottom-right corner, though you’ll have to be at least 21 years old to do so. The end result should be much more akin to carpooling with friends or coworkers rather than hailing a cab or ride-share — and rides will be much cheaper. The drawback, of course, is that the idea relies entirely on the fact that there will be a driver heading in the same direction as you. Despite that, Waze Carpool might be a great (and cheap) way to make your commute a little easier.

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