Where We’re Headed with Cost2Drive

Helping People Plan Better Car Trips

2011 has shaped up to be an exciting year for us at C2G.  We began the year with a great deal of TV coverage coinciding with the spike in gas prices.

TV Coverage of Cost2Drive.com

Then in late spring we decided to apply to the NYC TechStars incubator program and spent a few thrilling weeks heading to New York to interface with the TeschStars team and fellow entrepreneurs.   It was a wonderful experience and though we didn’t make the final cut, we all felt great about making it to the round of 30 out over 1,000 applicants.  We always felt we had something special and its seems the world is beginning to take notice.

As part of the TechStars application process we began to share our broader vision of where we are going with our flagship application Cost2Drive.  We introduced a new company name (CarTripper) which better reflects our mission of helping people plan better car trips.   We’ll be sharing more on this in the coming months, but you can get a glimpse of this new vision as part of a new competition we’re involved with on Bloomberg TV.   Bloomberg TV is working with TechStars on a number of initiatives including an upcoming TV series that chronicles the 11 startups accepted into the NYC winter program.

They are also hosting a contest on Facebook for the best startup ideas, which is where we come in.  We were just notified by Bloomberg that we’ve been selected as one of five finalists for this week’s competition (week #2).  At the end of the week (seven days from August 10th) the winner will be selected for Week #2 and will then move on to the next round to compete with all the weekly winners.

You can get a glimpse of our expanded vision for CarTripper by viewing the video we submitted to TechStars as part of the application process.  The video is available on the Bloomberg TV Facebook page in this special section created for TechStars (note: you’ll need to ‘like’ the page to be able to view the video and vote).

We have some exciting product releases right around the bend that we’ll be sharing more news on soon.  Meanwhile if you like where we’re headed with CarTripper let us know by voting for us in this Bloomberg TV – TechStars startup competition.

Happy Driving!

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Traffic to Cost2Drive Surpasses AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator!

When you envision a product you often have an existing product in mind where you see opportunity to improve or enhance it in a way that will better serve the marketplace.  Validation can come in many forms, such as user feedback, press attention or, if your product is a Website, traffic.  When we first launched Cost2Drive.com back on October, 2008 AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator was the product we had our sights on.  So far we’ve received a great deal of validation from our users and the press that we built a superior product.

Today  we’re very excited to report that we’ve achieved our third point of validation as for the first time since launching Cost2Drive traffic to the site has surpassed AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator.  As gas prices have soared in the past few months Cost2Drive is taking a disproportionate share of the market with Unique Visitors up 184% in December over November and up a stunning 271% from December 2009!  Meanwhile according to Compete.com, a site that reports Website visitation numbers,  traffic to AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator plummeted as Unique Visitors were down 58% compared to November and down 55% from the prior year.

Based on internal traffic data it appears this trend is continuing in January as recession-battered consumers try to better plan and budget for rising gas prices, and according to a recent US Energy Information Administration report there doesn’t appear to be much relief in sight as gas prices could surpass $4 by this summer.    That’s why we continue to innovate by providing new tools like the Facebook application we launched last month that calculates how much money you’d save driving an electric car to work.

We still believe there is tremendous opportunity for further innovation in this space so look for more exciting news from us in coming months!