GPS Navigation App Waze expands it's Ride-sharing feature as it looks to compete with Uber

The GPS navigation app, Waze, is ready to challenge ride-sharing app’s Uber and Lyft with a new carpooling service that will enable drivers and passengers to share rides and even split fuel costs. Riders will be able to filter drivers by range of criteria, including gender, star ratings, or if they are a coworker. According to Business Insider, waze’s carpooling service will charge 54 cents per mile on all trips. The Google owned app announced on Wednesday 10, that their carpool service will be available across all 50 states of America, allowing users to find rides from Waze drivers that are heading in the same direction. Ride-sharing rivals, Uber and Lyft, both offer their own versions of a carpooling option within their apps but the big difference with Waze’s service is that the drivers are “regular people” that already have jobs that will only be able to complete a maximum of two rides per day. According to a press release, Waze has already partnered with schools and a bunch of workplaces, including Amazon to offer the feature to those making daily trips. Waze was previously only available in San Francisco and in the country it’s based, Israel, but will now cover the whole of the United States. Whether it will expand across Europe is yet to be known, but with many similar competitors looking to gain secure footholds in as many different countries as possible, I wouldn’t bet against it.