Robin Chase, Founder and CEO, GoLoco www.goloco.org
Chase is the founder and CEO of GoLoco. GoLoco is a service that helps people quickly arrange to share rides between friends, neighbors, and colleagues. GoLoco also helps share trip costs online. Prior to GoLoco, Chase co-founded and was CEO of Zipcar, the world’s largest car-sharing company.
- I only have one thing on my mind incessantly – climate change and how we can get people motivated to act
- speaking to climatologists, talking to one of the leaders, looking at their slides – heavy in information.
- he says that if in 2015, if world wide CO2 gives down, we have a 50.50 chance of avoiding a climate disaster.
- in 2004, driving personal cars is 20% of CO2, 9% is making the cars and fuel, 17% was house electricity use
- biggest is car transport. So what can we do something. if we start today, when will it play out,
- politicians say buy fuel efficient car, use alternative fuel,, If everyone started now, then in yr 10, then only reduce by 5%. In urban areas, changes are often 20-25 years before effect.
- Carbon taxes are good – people change when money involved.  it would transform demand for walkable communities, change behaviour fast
- Next piece, what is the role of business?
- carbon taxes is like that horrible medicine that you have to take, even if horrible. the role of business is to make the medicine more palatable
- for people in suburban areas, car ownership can be 20+% of income, they are screwed. so what can we do for them?
- i want people to be able to create their own personal transportation system, with their cars and trips – ride sharing. this is goloco. the word car-pooling I hate, so I’m looking at a new word and concept
- built on facebook platform, tells you how much CO2 I have saved, it’s based around my friends and their trips.
- a bike team are using it to arrange their trips,. the payment system works well, no one gets left with it all.
- I’ve been called a one trick pony.  My previous company, innovative hire cars. Goloco leverages the expensive asset, the car, to make it more efficiently used.   I realised I was a two trick pony, how can we get end users to create the infrastructure. we are going to create a community public transportation network
- at zipcar, we got a one sentence email, from a customer.  ‘have I told you lately that I love you?’ That is what i am for
Tags: BIF, BIF3, Robin Chase, zipcar, goloco
