People Powered Travel, The Infographic
For the first time ever, there are over one million seats available on BlaBlaCar. To celebrate, we have created an infographic to tell the story of the big things that our little company has achieved in the world of car sharing.
Every trip posted on BlaBlaCar and every kilometre shared is thanks to our community of members; we call it People Powered Travel.
Celebrating Seven Figures
A couple of days ago BlaBlaCar hit an important milestone: for the first time ever there were more than one million seats offered in the car sharing community. In the travel business this is called seat capacity, and for BlaBlaCar it’s been growing 135% per year since 2009. Strong growth can be attributed to two factors. First, once drivers discover the economic advantage of car sharing they can never go back to driving with empty seats because it feels like wasting money. Second, news of a more social, more affordable, more flexible way of traveling is spreading fast thanks to word of mouth of satisfied members: the driving force behind strong organic growth.
Zooming 44,516 Times Around The World
1.8 billion Kilometers have been shared by members since BlaBlaCar founders launched the first version of the platform: that’s 44,516 times around the world. By car sharing instead of driving alone, BlaBlaCar members have saved approximately 500,000 tons of CO2 emissions, and counting!
Increasing Efficiency
Motoring now accounts for 84% of all transport in the UK. But it’s broken. It’s one of the biggest sources of pollution, contributing to poor air quality, climate change, congestion and noise disturbance. There are 77 vehicles per km of road and 61% of trips are made with no passengers; that’s a highly inefficient use of resources. By increasing car occupancy BlaBlaCar lightens the load on our roads and our planet. BlaBlaCar drivers are helping to fix road travel, one trip at a time.
Building Trust
BlaBlaCar is a community of trusted people who share journeys and then leave each other ratings, much like on eBay, but instead of buyers and sellers, BlaBlaCar has drivers and passengers. A member with positive ratings has been reviewed and approved by the BlaBlaCar community, in real life. Today, the platform has over 1.2 million ratings available for members to read before they choose to plan a car share--96% of them are positive. And then there’s BlaBlaCar customer support, who are always close by making sure everything goes smoothly, assisting members 24/7.
Helping Drivers Save Money
Travel costs are the biggest post in our budget after housing: a massive £136 billion of UK consumer spending went into travel in 2010, and our budgets are getting tighter everyday. According to latest figures from the RAC Cost of Motoring Index, owning a car in the UK now costs £6,689 a year (over eight thousand Euros)! But BlaBlaCar is easing the pain, drivers save a third of their petrol costs for every passenger they take. With three passengers they cover all their costs.
Sharing
Car sharing is part of a powerful global movement changing the way we live: collaborative consumption, also known as the sharing economy. It defines new, more efficient lifestyle choices that help us reduce our carbon footprint and level of spending by sharing resources in our communities. As one of the biggest sharing communities in Europe, BlaBlaCar is a major player in the rising sharing economy.
According to recent research, six out of ten people in the UK say that they would share their car with someone if they could; eight out of ten say that sharing makes them happy. Car sharing has a promising future.
Going Mobile
Hundreds of thousands of people all over Europe have downloaded the free BlaBlaCar mobile apps and after only a year, almost one in five trips are planned on a mobile device. After it’s UK launch in May, the app was featured two weeks running on the Apple UK App Store homepage. People are on the move, and BlaBlaCar is going with them.
