How everyday citizens can reduce pollution

By Prathima Manohar of The Urban Vision for ShareACar

 Climate change is among the greatest global challenges today, with implications on food production, water supply, health, energy, etc. We have to reduce our carbon emission dramatically in the next few decades to combat this crisis. Already, cities occupy barely 2 per cent[1] of the world's surface area and are responsible for 75 per cent of global energy consumption and 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions Half of this carbon emissions in our cities are related to transport. While other sectors have managed to reduce their energy use and related emissions; the transport sector emissions have been consistently increasing.  It is clearly a far more challenging issue to address.


The recent reports of toxic levels of pollution in Indian cities are an indicator of how bad things have gotten on ground. All of us have to work together and tiny steps to limit this crisis. One of the simplest actions you can take to address this environmental crisis is by starting to car pool.

Here are couple of statistics that enunciate how much difference this can make:

a)      The Average emissions level of a new car sold in 2014 was 123.4 g CO2/km.

b)      According to The “Empty seats traveling” study, by the Nokia Research Center ;  There are 500+ million private car sand we lose   500 billion dollars ( & contribute to related emissions)  due to empty seats  the world’s roads every year.

We can only imagine how must money we can save and pollution we could offset if we shared our resources wisely. Carpooling is profitable on an personal level and for your society as a whole. It can reduce air pollution while saving money in the process.


I am excited to see entrepreneurs addressing this issue through innovative and efficient ride sharing apps. These are the types of ideas that make for a “smart city” . Simple ideas such as ridesharing enable urban living that is productive, environmentally friendly and healthier.



Get on Board & start to Carpool!

Founded By IITians, ShareACar Is Adding Practicality To Carpooling As We Know It

Source: http://www.indianweb2.com/2015/10/27/shareacar



Nowadays, roads are more a sight of stagnant cars stuck in long traffics than moving cars. In fact, various state governments have also started various initiatives to curb the increasing figure of cars on roads and put a lid on the pollution problem. Car Free Day is one such initiative started by the Haryana government in Gurgaon and more recently in Delhi. The concept borrowed from the west, encourages the citizens to ditch their vehicles once a week and share a ride to office or use the public transport.

In 2009, carpooling represented 43.5% of all trips in the United States and 10% of commute trips. In India however, carpooling is still a relatively new concept which hasn’t it picked up traction in the Indian Market yet. The Indian market is exactly at an infant stage in terms of the ride sharing or carpooling market.

Even though, India do have handful of homegrown ride-sharing or carpooling startups/apps such asZify, sRide, Ridingo, among others, are providing its users decent platform which can be used for sharing rides.

Now, a relatively new carpooling app – ShareACar, claims to be adding practicality to carpooling as we know it.

ShareACar is a realtime ride-sharing app that helps connecting real verified users to share their rides together and helps them save fuel and environment in the process. The users can do the sharing in their own vehicles or book a cab for the same.

ShareAcar’s co-founders – Rohit Karan and Shobhit Srivastava, both alumnus of IIT Kanpur, came up with the idea for ShareACar after realising the traffic epidemic that the Indian cities are suffering from. They realised that even though everyone wanted the problem to be solved but yet no one did anything concrete about the same. They also realised that even though most of the people were in favour of the idea of carpooling but yet they didn’t consider it as a safe and practical option.

Mumbai-based ShareACar aims to solve this lifelong taboo associated with carpooling and ease commuting problems in Indian cities.

Shobhit Srivastava and Rohit Karan

There are many other carpooling players currently existing in the market, but no one has been able to make carpooling as practical an option as they have. They distinguish themselves from others in the market by offering the users a solution where people are empowered with no fixed fares (upto a certain cap), no route matching algorithm and complete flexibility to decide who they want to travel with. Further, every cash transaction is done through an online wallet, hence providing the people with an option to travel cashless.

The app has an attractive and super easy to use map based UI on which users can put in their coordinates. Further, the app is completely real time in order to ensure no unnecessary pre planning.

The startup which is self funded till now, has seen some 250 odd users registering over the last few weeks since its launch. Further, around 45 rides have already been shared on the app over the last 3 weeks.

The Mumbai based app plans to increase its presence in other cities in the coming future and is tying up with various agencies for the same.

Goldman Sachs on Ridesharing as the future of 'Commuting'

Source: http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/technology-driving-innovation/cars-2025/




THE INTERNET OF CARS

THE INTERNET OF THINGS DEMONSTRATES HOW CONNECTING EVERYDAY DEVICES TO A NETWORK TRANSFORMS WHAT WE CAN DO WITH THEM. THE INTERNET OF CARS WILL DO THE SAME.

Connected cars, communicating with each other and with the larger world, will not only reduce accidents and ease traffic. They will have powerful effects beyond the auto industry. Insurers, for example, will have new ways to monitor driver behavior, reward good drivers and distribute costs to bad ones. And ride-sharing companies can better connect idle cars with the customers that need them.

Ride sharing may be a mixed blessing for the auto industry. The majority of vehicles worldwide are used only to commute or for short trips during the day, leaving them idle 95% of the time. If drivers decide to forgo ownership and access cars only when they need them, car sales may be hurt.

Connected cars—especially self-driving ones—could also change the way people use their drive time. In a 2013 survey, more than 50% of respondents said they would prefer to listen to music, talk on the phone, watch videos or browse the Internet while traveling by car.