Reduced average ride wait time from 15 minutes to five
Optimizes fleet management infrastructure to help drivers take more trips in the same amount of time
Improves both driver and passenger experiences by consolidating navigation and ride management in a single app
Simplifies the drop-off and pick-up experience with more precise location data
Expansive, complex, and optimized fleet management infrastructure
The ridesharing industry is competitive and profit margins are tight. This means that even small operational improvements can make a big competitive difference. On the surface, luxury rideshare company Alto differentiates itself from other ride-hailing services by owning its fleet of high-end vehicles, hiring full-time drivers that embody the company's brand, and focusing on providing a safe, clean, consistent, and high-quality experience for every ride.
While drivers and passengers alike can feel this difference, Alto's real differentiator is its expansive, complex, and optimized fleet management infrastructure. Since Alto owns its fleet and employs its drivers, it has a consistent pool of data to make informed decisions about how and where to improve its management processes and tools.
Using Google Maps Platform is a win for our company because we manage our fleet more efficiently. It’s also a win for our drivers who can see exactly where they’re going and how best to get there. And it’s a win for our customers who get their rides faster.
Jonathan Campos
Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering, Alto
The company has integrated various Google Maps Platform products to improve experiences for both riders and drivers as well as its small but mighty infrastructure team. It's also connected this location data to its larger Google Cloud infrastructure — including BigQuery, Looker, and Vertex AI — that have helped Alto's small technical team stand up a vast cloud footprint and support large datasets. "Using Google Maps Platform is a win for our company because we manage our fleet more efficiently," says Jonathan Campos, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering at Alto. "It's also a win for our drivers who can see exactly where they're going and how best to get there. And it's a win for our customers who get their rides faster."
Centralizing geospatial data to improve the ride experience
By connecting passenger and navigation information in one app with Google Maps Platform Navigation SDK, our drivers always have their most important information in front of them.
Jonathan Campos
Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering, Alto
When Alto started its journey, the company relied on a collection of geospatial and data solutions to build its applications, but it knew its small team of five developers would be better served by a more unified and more flexible location data infrastructure. "Google Maps Platform is an all-in-one platform," Campos says. "It allows us to easily pick and choose which features to add over time, and we know they’ll all work together seamlessly."
Before switching to Google Maps Platform, Alto was manually building in temporary locations into its application when riders requested a pickup from a previously unnamed location; these places could be anything from a new restaurant to a parking lot temporarily turned into a farmer's market, but that information quickly became outdated.
This led to hours of manual upkeep and potentially outdated location data that complicated both pickup and drop-off. Alto collaborated closely with Google Maps Platform specialist, Navagis, to integrate Mobility services with the Alto app to centralize information for its drivers. With access to Google Maps Platform location data, drivers can more easily find the right spot sooner. "Nine times out of 10, our location data was spot-on, but that one time when the car is around the corner it makes everyone's life so much harder," Campos shares. "If there's ever a gap in our dataset, Google backs us up and suggests pickup and drop-off points."
Simplifying the driver-passenger relationship with a unified app
Using the Navigation SDK, Alto has made it so passengers and drivers see the same journey map at the same time directly within the Alto app. "If you're in a car and your driver misses a turn on your map, you might get a little concerned," says Campos. "Journey sharing makes it so everyone can see exactly what's happening, so you'll see that we actually rerouted to make the drive a little shorter rather than being left in the dark."
Drivers used to rely on the Alto driver app for information related to their passenger or journey but would switch over to the Google Maps app during their drive for navigation. While they appreciated the reliability of Google Maps for navigation, this change meant they lost context by leaving the app. "The Alto app showed them all of their passenger information and extra notes like gate codes," Campos shares. "It's also how our fleet managers communicate information. By connecting this information within one app with Google Maps Platform Navigation SDK, our drivers always have their most important information in front of them without leaving our app."
Bringing the Alto brand promise to Uber customers
Alto and Uber have partnered to bring Alto drivers and vehicles to the Uber platform in select cities. "We're excited to work with Uber to bring our consistency, high standards for service, and fleet optimization techniques to their large user base," says Campos. "The infrastructure we've built with Google Maps Platform means our drivers are the first ones to busy spots, we know how to get them there faster, and we can forecast in ways other drivers simply can't."
Beyond direct service, Alto and Uber are working closely to add Alto's fleet management capabilities into the Uber ecosystem. "When margins in our industry are so narrow, small improvements go a long way, and we've been able to show the Uber team which APIs or features we're using to do that. It's important for us that we continue to push the bleeding edge of what fleets are capable of."
The infrastructure we've built with Google Maps Platform means our drivers are the first ones to busy spots, we know how to get them there faster, and we can forecast in ways other drivers simply can't.
Jonathan Campos
Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering, Alto
Creating a scalable fleet infrastructure for the future of ridesharing
As Alto continues to optimize its management and ride experience minute to minute and ride by ride. It's continuing to work closely with Navagis to build next generation fleet infrastructure with the latest capabilities from Google Maps Platform, and it's looking forward to amassing a greater fleet with the same standards it upholds today. "We've gone from 50 cars to hundreds. Next year, we'll have thousands, and each ride will still be just as consistent because of the operational efficiencies that we're building," Campos shares. "This is where customers can feel the difference. When you get into one of our cars, it always smells the same, the driver treats you the same, it picks you up when it says it will. That's not by accident. It's through a lot of hard effort and the work we're doing behind the scenes with Google Maps Platform."
Alto is a luxury rideshare company that staffs full-time employees as drivers, rather than a network of independent contractors. The company curates its luxury ride experience by owning and managing its own fleet of vehicles to create a consistent rider and employee experience.
Industry: Travel & Hospitality
Location: United States
Products: Google Maps Platform, Dynamic Maps, Mobility services, Navigation SDK, Places API, Routes
About Google Cloud partner- Navagis
Navagis is a Google Maps Platform and Google Cloud Partner helping enterprises to transform their operations with location intelligence, data discovery, ML, and visualization.
