Mitsubishi Wants You to Carpool With Other People, Patents a New Social Credit System

(by Florin Ameriei | Autoevolution) – When ridesharing was introduced, we were all thinking that it’s a good way of traveling faster from point A to point B with minimal stranger interaction. Mitsubishi is looking to change how we perceive these services, especially since autonomous taxis are just around the corner. Here’s how it’ll make you like having multiple stops en route to your destination.

While EV production and autonomous driving aren’t its strongest suits at the moment, Mitsubishi U.S. is keen on putting technology to work. The company wants you to travel with other people, and it will reward you for that. If you refuse, then you’ll have to pay tokens on a blockchain. It sounds futuristic, but remember, patents aren’t always a guarantee of production. It might happen; it might not.

Mitsubishi’s basic idea here is to conserve fuel or energy while taking as many people as possible to their destinations. By doing this, it’s also trying to avoid congestion on the roads. Remember when Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson sat near a UK highway and counted all the people traveling alone in their cars? The British star wanted to prove back then that people preferred bigger cars for all the wrong reasons. In the end, this too became a factor for traffic jams. That’s what Mitsubishi is trying to do with its new system – the company wants to avoid road bottlenecks. At the same time, it wants to make sure ridesharing companies are using their fleets in a responsible way by offering their services when needed and with the maximum efficiency possible.

Basically, it plans on creating a complex software that’ll allow those operators like Uber or Waymo which implement it to offer their customers cheaper fares and keep running costs as low as possible. If the users find themselves in conjunction with others that also need to travel around the same place, the system will create a ridesharing plan. The first occupant will be asked if he wants to travel with someone else in the car. If he or she accepts, then the cost is automatically lowered. This can be a discount or a reward that can amount to a free ride in the future. Read Full Article >