Co-car BETA

This application is undergoing a testing phase, and it might not work as expected. Right now, this application only works at the university network.

Ridesharing has the potential to bring a wealth of benefits both to the actors directly involved in the shared trip (e.g., shared travel costs or access to high-occupancy vehicle facilities) and also to the society in general (e.g., reduced traffic congestion and CO2 emissions). Recent studies have highlighted how privacy concerns and the lack
of trust among peers are crucial issues that hamper the success of ridesharing.

In this application, we tackle both of these issues by means of:
- A fully decentralized P2P ridesharing management network that avoids centralized ride-matching agencies (and hence private data compilation by such agencies)
- A distributed reputation management protocol that brings trust among peers, even when they have not previously interacted.

This application rests on the recently proposed notion of co-utility (essentially, self-enforcing and mutually beneficial collaboration), which ensures that rational (even purely selfish) peers will find no incentives to deviate from the prescribed protocols.