Do you want to get around the city quickly and without having to use public transport? Did you just arrive by plane or by train and have too much to haul around on busses and trams? But are you also tired of the big car rental companies which seem to be either unecological or too expensive? Then car sharing might be for you.
What is car sharing?
Car sharing is fundamentally just like car rentals, but it has a few notable exceptions. First is when you rent the car itself. Instead of reserving a specific car and then going to a parking lot of a car rental company, you register, get an app, and look at a map to find a car from a car-sharing company that’s near you. You go to it, usually paying via your smartphone, unlock it via an app and drive to where you want to go. And when you’re done you just leave it standing in the street. In a way, it’s somewhere between car rental and a taxi that you drive yourself.
There are different spins on this formula. Sometimes the cars are owned by one company, sometimes they are owned by individuals. Sometimes car sharing is only for one city and sometimes you can use car-sharing for long-distance trips. It depends a lot on what you’re looking for but if you drive only occasionally, car sharing might even be cheaper than owning a car of your own.
Car sharing services in Budapest
Luckily, Budapest is full of different car-sharing opportunities as it has become a growing market in recent years. The most traditional type of car sharing is the ShareNow company. It has many different types of cars (from a Mini to a BMW) which you can hire through their app. Another is Mollimo which offers about 450 cars all over Budapest. About a 100 is electrical cars whilst the rest is gas-powered. However, they offer cars of many different sizes and conveniences. Another company which taps more into the electric car market is Green Go. Their cars are usually smaller but that makes them perfect for getting around the city quickly.
Find the perfect accommodation in Budapest
An interesting kind of car sharing is the so-called peer to peer car sharing like on the site Autopal. There you will find cars not owned by a company but by other people who rent them out. The company is only a middleman and so some guarantees might not apply. But there is a lot of special kinds of cars you can rent out so if you’re looking for something specific, this might be the place to get it. Lastly, there is LulaRides which provides the same service as Autopal but is primarily focused on car sharing for college students.
Car sharing Budapest prices
The prices tend to depend on the kind of service and the type of car you are searching for. The Green Go carsharing, for example, has cars which cost only about 20 cents €/min but are all mostly Minis. But if you rent cars from ShareNow, their prices begin at 30 cents €/min but you have more choices to the size of the car. Both, however, provide the gas, parking, and maintenance for free. Even signing up for their car-sharing programs doesn’t cost you a penny. This means that you really only pay for the time you spent driving around. The cheapest option is the LulaRides which gets you around the town for only about 10 cents €/min.
Car sharing insurance
The insurance policy varies from company to company. Somewhere you only pay about 10% of damages to the car, somewhere you’ll find a more tiered system where depending on the size of the cheque you pay more or less. It is advisable to always check the insurance policies of the various companies before driving their cars.
One thing you will always pay, regardless of the company, are any speeding and parking tickets. There might also be some administrative fees connected to that so you might end up paying more than just the ticket.
