As Uber Technologies Inc. is beset by a worsening sexual harassment scandal, Google Inc.’s new carpool service, Waze, is making hay.

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, Google is set to launch Waze in several U.S. cities and cities in Latin America in coming months. This follows successful testing of the Waze Carpool service in the San Francisco Bay area and Tel Aviv.

Waze isn’t alone in trying to take advantage of Uber’s woes. On Thursday, Lyft Inc. said it’s expanding into 54 new U.S. cities, bringing the total to 300 cities in its biggest expansion to date.

Waze Chief Executive Noam Bardin admitted that Waze might have gotten into the game late, arriving just when people had begun to feel comfortable using Uber and its smaller competitor Lyft’s service, but he added that Waze offers a different kind of service.

While the two largest ride-sharing outfits are basically people making their cars taxis, Bardin said Waze Carpool is more like asking people to share a ride to work and chip in for the gas: “Can we get the average person on his way to work to pick someone up and drop them off once in a while?”

Chipping in for gas means just that – no extra costs at the moment – making the commute to work quite a lot cheaper than using Uber of Lyft. The downside is you have to request your ride in advance, and you might not even get it.

It’s early days for Waze, and while the time seems right to make an impact given Uber’s ongoing woes, it’s reported out of the 150,000 Waze users signing up to be drivers, only a small percentage have actually become a carpool driver.

Still, Bardin said he feels confident as Waze has not had issues with governments. The service is not seen as direct competition to traditional taxi services as Uber and Lyft are; indeed, it’s seen as a positive measure to reduce traffic congestion.

Meanwhile, new reports have emerged calling the Uber work environment “Hobbesian,” as employees allegedly have to survive a dog-eat-dog atmosphere. The New York Times reported that Uber staff, past and present, told stories of groped female employees and a physical threat involving a baseball bat.

While Uber has promised it would be “healing wounds of the past and building a better workplace culture for everyone” and would now refrain from hiring “brilliant jerks,” it has to prove it. That could take awhile at a time when it can’t afford to lose ground to hard-charging rivals.

Photo: Oskari Niitamo via Flickr