Rise in fuel prices: carpooling, big winner of the increase

Aurélien Fleurot, edited by Solène Leroux 12:33 p.m., March 27, 2022

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The government will help the French to fill up with gasoline from April 1, with a discount of 18 cents per liter in mainland France.

In the meantime, some French people have already changed their habits.

With a price per liter sometimes exceeding two euros, many are turning to carpooling to go to the office.

Since early March, the number of registrants has tripled every day and the number of journeys made has doubled over the same period.

Unheard of for Blablacar Daily, home/work carpooling platform. 

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For its managing director, Adrien Tahon, this time it is a fundamental trend.

"It's really unprecedented, but it fits into an already buoyant context for carpooling home / work", he explains at the microphone of Europe 1. "We had observed during the February holidays, which are normally a moment of relatively low activity for home/work carpooling, which we continued to grow, so we said to ourselves: 'It's amazing, people continue to get started, even for the holidays'", recalls the director general.

A fundamental trend according to specialists

But at the end of the holidays, when "the explosion in the cost of fuel took place", he recalls, "we really had a lot" of people, that is to say "several dozen thousands of subscribers per week, who rushed to Blablacar Daily and started to carpool".

Same success on other platforms like Karos, Klaxit or Citygo.

According to several experts in new mobility, this is a sign that the French are beginning to realize that traveling alone is no longer necessarily logical.

Above all, that you can monetize the empty places in your car and earn on average a hundred euros per month.