For those unfamiliar with the concept, carpooling is all about sharing your car with others that are on the same route. Now, French startup Karos Mobility, in partnership and co-funded by EIT Urban Mobility, is enhancing the carpooling experience people know, with an app that deploys an algorithm to optimise planned trips, and artificial intelligence to save precious time on daily commutes.

Karos Mobility’s app delivers a host of benefits for users, and the cities they live in, by cutting unnecessary travel expenses and reducing commuters’ environmental footprint. The startup already boasts over one million users in Europe who use the app to carpool to and from work.

“I see a great future for carpooling within the range of mobility options in the city here,” says Juan Carlos Escudero, Manager of the Mobility and Data Science Unit at the Centre for Environmental Studies in the Spanish city of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Transforming commutes

In the Spanish city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Karos Mobility, with the support of the municipality and EIT Urban Mobility, has kicked off a pilot project that aims to build the future of sustainable urban mobility.

“Every day there are 40,000 people who go to work in the industrial estates here, and the expected outcome is to change the habits of the people who live here, [while] at the same time they’re reducing the carbon footprint of the city,” says Karos Mobility Project Manager, Julien Chemin.

Most of these 40,000 trips are by car alone, generating significant emissions. So, reducing the thousands of daily journeys from the city centre to industrial estates by commuters promises to have meaningful positive impact. “This is where the solution really lies in significantly reducing the emissions associated with mobility,” Escudero explains. For the city, he says it is about “rationalising the use of the car for commuting” and not “criminalising” drivers.

Incentivising shared mobility

Karos Mobility aims to reduce the number of cars on the road each day by matching drivers who are going in the same direction. This allows commuters to maximise their trips, and even financially incentivises drivers to share their route with others. The way it works is that drivers set their route in the app and wait for other users to sign up, with each journey netting the driver at least €1.50 per passenger. With the employment of artificial intelligence and geolocation, the app matches drivers with the best possible passengers for their route.

“I don’t have to make any detours, because thanks to Karos I can see which passengers are better suited to my route and which aren’t,” says 29-year-old carpool driver and tech park worker Andrea Zapater. Zapater prefers using Karos Mobility, so she does not have to travel to work alone, and as an added bonus, it contributes to her petrol budget. While drivers pay nothing for their ride, passengers benefit from the functionality of the app, which automatically considers their preferences, such as how far they are willing to walk.

Critical mass, lasting change

“This type of shared mobility solution is destined to play a greater role [in the future of mobility] and we need to ensure that they become established,” Escudero predicts. But before shared mobility solutions like Karos Mobility can help hundreds of companies lower their employee’s commuting carbon emissions, the change in behaviour must first be embraced.

This is a “cultural challenge” according to Escudero, partly due to the individualistic role the car has played in society, in which people might doubt the reliability of a carpooling service if they are not the ones in the driver’s seat. To overcome this perception, it takes building a critical mass of users willing to adopt something new in their lives.

“Of course, we are always sharing cars with friends, colleagues or family, but we never do it via an application that also shares the costs,” Karos Mobility’s Julien Chemin explains. This first group of Karos Mobility users is seen as fundamental because they are the ones who will help the app grow by word of mouth and who will advocate its benefits.

So, for cities like Vitoria-Gasteiz, how much impact can the startup expect to have on the carbon emissions due to daily commuting? During the scope of the pilot, from September to December of 2023, 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide was saved, Chemin explains that this figure, “corresponds more or less to the manufacturing of 240 mobile phones.”

Since the company’s launch in France in 2014, Karos Mobility has expanded to other countries, including Germany, Denmark, and now Spain. In total, the app has enabled up to eight million journeys, which adds up to an impressive 13,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions avoided.

Being awarded with Urban Mobility’s ‘SME Market Expansion Call 2023’ (formerly known as the Small Call for SMEs) has allowed Karos Mobility to pilot their solution with Vitoria-Gasteiz. “Well, we are very satisfied with the experience of the [EIT Urban Mobility’s] Small Call for SMEs because we have seen real support and help…I would recommend companies to participate in the call because they have helped us a lot to develop a new project,” reports Chemin. Together, EIT Urban Mobility, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Karos Mobility have realised a new carpooling network for commuters in the city to help hundreds of companies reduce their carbon footprint.

Building community

Beyond the positive environmental impacts of shared mobility, the Karos Mobility network is expected to deliver meaningful social and economic benefits.

“People find themselves travelling, sharing cars with colleagues, or with people they didn’t know,” Chemin says of how carpooling can help create a sense of community, and reduce loneliness and isolation.

Even more tangible are the financial savings for passengers. Karos Mobility reports that its users have saved a total of €30 million since their founding in 2014. Clara Monterde, a 25-year-old who recently relocated to Vitoria-Gasteiz uses Karos “almost every day to get to and from work.” Travelling from her home in the city centre, to her office in a technology park via Karos Mobility has given her the perspective that the service is a much cheaper, more comfortable alternative to other means of transport. As a bonus, it makes her commute shorter and allows her to tailor her journeys to suit the time she needs to go to work or go home.

The environmental benefits are not lost on her either. “I’m very aware of the environment and being able to contribute to reducing our carbon footprint is very important for me in my daily life. If I can also do it on my way to and from work, so much the better,” Monterde says.