With the surge in crude oil, fuels have exceeded the two-euro threshold at the pump.
The French are looking for solutions to save and find the cheapest gas stations around their homes.
The main winners are mobile applications, for which the number of users has jumped in the past two weeks.
On Android devices, three comparators thus appear on the French podium of the “
best zero-euro applications
”: Station La Minus Chère (SLMC), Gasoline & Co and Gasoil Now.
Same observation on Apple terminals where Gasoline & Co and Gasoil Now appear respectively in third and fourth place in the ranking of free applications in France.
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“
We have gone from 400 new daily users on the Google Play Store to more than 15,000 per day since March 2,
” observes Daniel Pham, creator of Gasoil Now.
Launched in France seven years ago, the platform now has more than 1.5 million users.
Thanks to geolocation, the application displays the prices of nearby gas stations.
The prices of E10 are displayed for each service station, you must then click on an establishment to see the amounts of the other fuels.
Screenshot of Diesel Now
By clicking on an establishment, all the fuels appear: B7, B7+, B10, SP98 and SP95.
Although its use is free, Gasoil Now has introduced advertising on its platform and user data is sold to partners.
But Daniel Pham assures him, “
this is anonymous information, collected only with the consent of users
”.
“I have never seen such a significant increase in such a short period”
Gasoil Now is not the only platform to observe an increase in the number of its users, because SLMC has made the same observation on its side.
Its founder, Simon Gradave, specifies that “
in February, there were around 500 new daily installations.
For the past fortnight, the average has been 9,000 daily installations, with a peak of 27,000 last Friday.
He completes that he "
has never experienced such a significant increase over such a short period
".
In order to list the prices of each French station, these applications use data from the prix-carburants.gouv.fr site, which updates them every fifteen minutes.
It is the pump attendants themselves who transmit the evolution of the prices of their service stations.
In order to avoid any drift, the DGCCRF carries out controls and in 2020, among the 1,329 establishments targeted and controlled, 235 were in anomaly (17.7%).
Read alsoFuels: a discount at the pump of 15 cents per liter from April 1
Users are indeed sometimes surprised by the information provided by the applications.
Olivia, a teacher from Berruyère, thus paid the price for incorrect information about Essence&Co: "
When I first used the application, it sent me to a service station 15 minutes from my home where the liter of diesel fuel was displayed at 1.80 euro but it was closed.
“
The second recommended station offered a liter of diesel at 2.10 euros, but dozens of customers were queuing.
Finally, I realized that an establishment two minutes from my house was selling a liter of diesel at 1.80 euros but it was not referenced on the platform
,” she adds.
After this misadventure, Olivia therefore deleted the application from her smartphone.
Thousands of new users for BlaBlaCar
In addition to comparators, other applications are doing well. Some users are turning to carpooling platforms such as BlaBlaCar Daily, which should exceed two million people registered this month.
“
For two weeks, there have been twice as many daily subscribers, that is several thousand new users.
And this increase continues to increase day by day
, ”says the group.
BlaBlaCar specifies that a "
driver who picks up a single passenger can save up to two full tanks of gas per month thanks to carpooling revenue
".
Note that more than 75% of registrants are located outside Ile-de-France, “
generally in places poorly served by public transport
”, indicates the company.
