How your contribution is worked out

Nobody on E2U sets a price. There is no fare, no surge and no bidding. What a journey costs is worked out from what the car costs to run, and shared between the people in the car.

The figure everything starts from

E2U does not invent a rate. It uses a published figure for what it costs to run a car of that class, per mile, covering fuel, tires, maintenance, repairs, insurance and depreciation. Fuel alone is roughly a quarter of what a car actually costs to drive a mile, which is why a trip priced on petrol money leaves the host out of pocket.

Source: AAA Your Driving Costs 2026, 15,000 miles a year. When that publication updates, E2U updates these and says so. A host picks which of these describes their own car.

Your share of the shared part

A journey is cut into segments at every point where somebody gets in or out. Each segment costs its miles times the rate. That cost is divided by the number of people in the car for that segment, including the host.

So the more people share a stretch of road, the less each of them pays for it. If somebody joins after you agreed a figure, your share falls and you are charged the lower amount.

The miles that exist only because of you

If a host comes off their route to collect you, those extra miles were not part of their journey. Nobody else benefits from them, so nobody else shares them: they are yours in full. The same applies at the other end, and to any toll or parking charge your pickup or drop off caused.

Pickup and drop off are measured separately, against the journey as it would have been without you. That is why you are shown a choice before you commit:

What time has to do with it

Nothing, in money. A host is shown how many minutes a detour adds so they can decide whether to accept it. Those minutes are never charged to anybody. Paying somebody for their time is paying them for labour, and that is a different arrangement from sharing a cost.

What E2U charges

E2U adds its service fee to the guest's side. It applies to the part of a contribution for the route that was shared, and not to the part covering a host going out of their way. It is never taken out of what the host recovers, and it never applies to the part that covers going out of their way.

The card processor charges 2.9% of each payment plus $0.30. The Guest and the Host split it, half and half, and E2U carries none of it: out of every trip E2U keeps its service fee and nothing more.

Your host receives exactly the same either way. The membership changes what E2U charges you, never what they recover.

A whole trip, worked through

20 miles in a medium sedan, shared between the host and one guest who meets them on the route. Priced by the same engine that prices real trips, right now:

The host's journey cost them $7.03 instead of $14.07. Add a third person and all three shares fall again. Nothing here changes on a Friday night or in the rain: a car does not cost more to run because somebody wants it more.

What you agree to, and what can change

• You are shown an estimated maximum before you ask to join a trip.
• Your final contribution can be lower than that, and often is, because more sharing means smaller shares.
• It is never higher unless the route changes and you agree to the change.
• A host may accept less than the figure E2U works out. They can never charge more: the software will not take it.

Your receipt

Afterwards every line is itemised separately: your share of the shared route, anything your own pickup and drop off added, any toll or parking your request caused, and E2U's fee. You can see exactly what reached your host and exactly what E2U took.