2023-11-25 10:38:03
BlaBlaCar He is about to celebrate 15 years since he landed in Spain. Her main business, for which she is commonly recognized by consumers, is that of shared cars for long distance travel. The digital platform brings together drivers with empty seats in their vehicles and passengers interested in making the same trip and sharing expenses. A carpooling service that has 8 million users in the Spanish market, and that is and will be the great pillar of its activity.
The company also entered Spain fully a few years ago in the bus transportation, operating with its own buses international routes with France and Portugal (national internal connections are not liberalized and are operated under a concession regime) and marketing tickets from other companies for domestic routes (it already has an agreement to sell Jiménez Dorado group trips between Madrid and Ávila, and negotiates with other companies to enhance third-party distribution and increase its offer of bus routes).
BlaBlacar is now actively exploring the Spanish market to launch other totally new services with the aim of completing its multimodal transport offer. The group’s plans go through sell train tickets on your digital platform and also launch a new car sharing service for short and regular journeys (to go to work or to the study center) for those who seek public aid to drivers so that it is profitable for them. For both alternatives, it has already initiated contacts with other companies and with Administrations with the aim of activating them.
BlaBlaCar now works with Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo -the three companies that offer high-speed train services in the Spanish market- to adapt and integrate their respective technological platforms with the aim of including the railway companies’ tickets in their own app and offering them to their users, as confirmed by sources from the company to El Periódico de España, from the Prensa Ibérica group. At the moment it involves work between the technical teams of all the companies, a prior technological development step to later negotiate the commercial aspects of the alliances.
BlaBlaCar’s aim is to be able to offer a more complete offer to its users. showing them different alternatives for their journeys and combining various types of transport. Currently, when a BlaBlaCar user searches for transportation for a specific trip, the app may show the option of car sharing and buses. The objective is to soon add – although the company avoids giving deadlines – also train tickets to these alternatives on the same BlaBlaCar platform.
Also very short trips
Until now, the company focuses its business in Spain on shared cars for long-distance journeys (the average trip of its users is about 300 kilometers). But the group also intends to launch a service for short and regular trips. Promote car sharing to go to work or to go to class, repeating the model that is already exploited in France with the BlaBlaCar Daily service.
The main objective of both drivers and passengers is to save by sharing the costs of the trip. BlaBlaCar’s proposal to drivers who offer their vehicles is that the cost is 0.045 euros for each kilometer traveled (although they have some margin to lower or raise that price) and, given that the usual travel distances are long, car sharing is profitable for vehicle owners. A commission of around 20% is added to the amount charged by the drivers, which includes the management costs for which BlaBlacar charges and VAT.
On short trips (20 or 30 kilometers) it is more difficult for drivers to find it attractive to offer their empty seats, because the income would be very low and it would not compensate for the inconveniences of sharing a car every day. It is because of that BlaBlaCar seeks that these drivers receive public aid to encourage the use of shared cars, as is already happening in France, where regional governments pay drivers to share a car or simply to offer their empty spaces, even if they are not occupied.
Public driver aid
BlaBlaCar has begun to convey this request in its meetings with representatives of several governments of Spanish autonomous communities, in search of direct incentives for drivers willing to share a car on short distance journeys to get fewer private vehicles on the roads and in cities.
The expected Sustainable Mobility Law state – which was paralyzed on the verge of its approval due to the early elections – should serve as a basis for the communities to approve their own regulations in this regard and in which BlaBlaCar hopes that measures will be included to encourage car sharing as a measure of sustainability and efficiency .
“Being able to launch BlaBlaCar Daily in Spain depends on the incentives that the driver receives for sharing their car. Whether the service runs depends on the autonomous communities, and we are already talking to them about it. “We need a model that encourages the driver to publish their empty seats on short trips,” the company points out, and they emphasize that there is a willingness on the part of regional governments to study the initiative.
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