With the ride-hail industry's battle for the hearts and wallets of users in China and India as competitive as ever, Uber on Wednesday will start testing a new carpool service in a bid to unlock the power of the casual Chinese driver — and gain highly coveted market share.
Uber still has a ways to go before it catches up to the market share of its competitors in either China or India, but the company has managed to keep up with — and in some cases, outpace — Didi Kuaidi and Ola in terms of the products and services.
So what to do when its biggest U.S. competitor, Lyft, announces it is teaming up with the dominant ride-hail player in China? To steal a phrase from Lyft, Uber is attempting to "unlock every seat, in every car" by testing out a new carpool service — UberCommute — for commuters willing to pick up a passenger going their way.
UberCommute is the company's attempt to activate a pool of drivers in China that it often touts in the U.S.: The casual driver. Opening up the Uber platform to people outside the pool of professional drivers may give the company's supply the boost it needs to continue to compete with Didi Kuaidi and now Lyft.
On the rider side, the service — which Didi Kuaidi already offers — works almost exactly like it works if the rider was hailing a People's Uber Plus, which is UberChina's answer to UberPool. The difference comes from the driver side.
Drivers, or Uber hopes, commuters, simply input their destination and the routing algorithm will match them with a passenger who is close to their starting location and heading to a destination close to their own. In other words, the algorithm treats the driver as if they're another UberPool passenger waiting for a second passenger to join them on the ride.
At launch, Uber is testing UberCommute in Chengdu, with plans to expand the service throughout the country and eventually into markets outside China, including the U.S.
Versions of services like UberCommute already exist in other markets. In Israel, for instance, Google-owned mapping company, Waze, began piloting a carpooling service in July. In the U.S., Uber's own former chief technology officer and co-founder Oscar Salazar launched Ride, which works basically the same way that UberCommute will work with a few exceptions. For one, Ride typically matches co-workers with similar commutes. And instead of being paid for the service, Ride drivers simply split the cost of expenses, such as gas, with their passengers.