Car sharing

In a week when several accidents happened one after another on Czech railways I decided to try carsharing. Since I often use RegioJet, I went with CAR4WAY. With a voucher from the carrier you don't pay the sign-up fee (1,000 CZK). Fill in the required details and once confirmed you can go pick up your card.

We had the car rented for the weekend (back then there was no Weekend+200km tariff yet), so we paid quite a bit for the kilometres. Carsharing works like all the others — you pay an amount proportional to the rental period plus a per-kilometre rate. You can reserve a car no earlier than 60 minutes before the rental, which is quite impractical if you want to plan ahead. But since the cars are freely available (in Brno), someone might rent one before you. There are nearly 80 cars available across Brno — from what I know they're all Škodas (Fabia, Rapid, Octavia and Karoq), all petrol engines (1.0 TSI and 1.5 TSI).

Once you've chosen and reserved, you walk to the spot, tap your card and off you go. If you need to refuel there's a CCS card available. Once you finish, you tap out and you're billed for the actual rental time and kilometres driven.

Financially, it's definitely worth it for a weekend with the 200 km package. Also for rentals under 30 minutes, where the kilometres are included. As long as you're not stuck in one of the many summer traffic jams Brno is full of, it's a great way to get around. Tap out the car on the other side of the city and you can reserve it again.