Oh, patents! BlaBlaCar™

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Do you blah, blah blah or blah blah blah? In other words, “How talkative are you when you commute with other folks? This intriguing user profile question gave the now famous ridesharing company, formerly called Comuto S.A, its trademarked name.  

BlaBlaCar™ is a long distance ridesharing company, founded in 2004, after one of its founders could not get home for xmas, considering that he could not get train tickets and did not own a car.  BlaBlaCar™ now operates in 22 European countries, connecting 18 million travelers every quarter, who are “going the same way” for an average 150 miles. The long-distance travel network, not only has 60 million subscribers, it has deliberately developed digital trust tools, using ratings, reviews, and verified user-profiles, to bring people together, who otherwise would never have met. 

The BaBlaCar™ mobile platform, supporting long-distance ridesharing, also seeks to offer more cost-efficient and enjoyable road travel, with less traffic and thus a decreased carbon footprint. The included small data chart shows the BlaBlaCar™ carbon footprint and its contribution to decreasing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

The BlaBlaCar™ mobile ride-sharing platform and system are recited in two recent US patent applications:

• US2018023967 (A1) - 2018-01-25 - Method and system for identifying meeting points
• US2018172459 (A1) - 2018-06-21 - Method and system for determining detoured trips. 

The first patent application, US2018023967, recites the system and method for generating acceptable pick-up points on a given route. For example, a pick-up point at the local train station, or at a particular neighborhood school, computed to minimize the detours on any given route with several stops, that are acceptable to the driver and workable for potential passengers. The abstract is included below: 

A method of and a system for processing a ridesharing request. The method comprising receiving instructions to create a trip in the ridesharing platform; generating an original route by causing to compute an original polyline defining the original route; accessing a set of meeting points; determining from the set of meeting points, candidate meeting points which are within a distance from the original polyline; generating for each one of the candidate meeting points, a detour route by causing to compute a detour polyline defining the detour route; identifying selected candidate meeting points from the candidate meeting points; and storing the selected candidate meeting points, the selected can didate meeting points being associated with the trip.

[Abstract US2018023967] 

The second patent application, US2018172459, recites the system and method for increasing matches between the trips that drivers publish and offer, and the trips that passengers are seeking. The invention consists in the method and system of computing detours that are acceptable to the drivers, in some instances based on the rideshare requests. The abstract of the patent is included below.

A system for and a method of determining that a detoured trip is to be presented to a potential passenger. The method comprises receiving a rideshare request; generating a rideshare request parameter; and accessing, from a database, trip filtering parameters associated with trips. The method further comprises determining that at least one of the trips is a candidate for which a detour route is to be computed based on an analysis of the rideshare request parameter and a corresponding trip filtering parameter associated with the at least one of the trips; causing to compute, for the at least one of the trips determined as being the candidate for which the detour route is to be computed, a detoured trip; and determining that the detoured trip is to be presented to the potential passenger by analyzing the deviation value of the detoured trip and the deviation threshold. [Abstract US2018172459]

References

Blablacar™

https://www.blablacar.com/

Shaheen, S. (March 23, 2017) BlaBlaCar™ and the rise of carpooling in France. Move Forward. Moovel Group.

https://www.move-forward.com/blablacar-and-the-rise-of-carpooling-in-france/

Shaheen, S., Stocker A and M. Mundler  (July 2016) Online and app-based carpooling in France: Analyzing users and practices – A study of BlaBlaCar™.  BlaBlaCar™ White paper
http://innovativemobility.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/BlaBlaCar_Whitepaper_FINAL.pdf