How big is carpooling market?
Is there still a demand of carpool as there are no apps that competes with Blablacar globally in their recent round company was valued over 3 Billion. What would we an ideal carpool app that can solve long distance travel problems?
Carpool is perhaps the only means of commute that offers no timing flexibility. Unlike public transport or driving/cycling alone. I would think, its a rather small market preferred by people with shift jobs or state/federal employees who don't can't stay a minute below or above their office hours.
We should spend more time and energy improving pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and stop the growth of urban sprawl which makes you incorrectly think you need to solve this problem. A great book on this topic - Carmageddon
No I want a car
You can have one. You just don't have to drive it every day.
I think it is a great way to save money and help the environment.
The big problem I see is security / trust. But you have that risk with rideshare.
Lately blablacar has been charging hitchhikers/travelers up front. So you as a driver know for sure you won't end up with nothing. This is really useful IMO, but also mostly significantly reduce the popularity of the service in places with low reliability among members.
In western Europe, particularly Germany, it was still very easy to find people, in eastern Europe, not so much. Even though before this change, years ago, blablacar was very popular in said eastern Europe countries.