The story of Autonapul
Standa Kutáček, one of the founders and current chairman of Autonapul, shares the story of how carsharing began in the Czech Republic.
The story of Autonapul begins
It all starts with an idea. And I remember exactly how the story of Autonapul began, when and where the idea was born. It was one January afternoon in 2003, in a car on the highway just past Rozvadov heading toward Plzeň. My colleague Jirka and I were returning from a conference in Essen, organized by the Transport Research Centre, and among other things, we started discussing why carsharing had been working for over twenty years in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, yet no one in our country even knew what it was.
One thing led to another - Jirka’s mom had an old, unused car. So we agreed to try the concept out “at the mill” in Křtiny, where we were living with our newly formed families at the time. Yes, that’s the painted Zastava, older than any of us, which you might spot in historic photos of Autonapul. Though we only painted it later. And the name Autonapul? It came about quickly, it’s a play on the tale of the clever princess from the Brothers Grimm, or Jan Werich’s Queen Scooter. In car sharing, the idea is to have-and-not-have a car: to be able to use it when needed, but not have to own it. After all, Aristotle is said to have claimed that value lies in use, not in ownership.
How did it work?
We created a simple way to split the costs of the car. From the beginning, we paid based on a combination of time and kilometers driven. However, the time cost was more symbolic. Naturally, we handed over the keys in person, and it was a long time before we had any fuel cards. Then Ludvík joined our original trio, he didn’t see the point of owning a car either but occasionally needed to transport things. The system worked well. We had access to a car when we needed it, without sinking lots of money into it. More friends joined, so we bought a used Felicia. In 2005, we launched our first online reservation system, using open-source software originally intended for booking meeting rooms. It served us for many years.
The formation of Autonapul cooperative
Around 2009, we met people from Autodružstvo, a group of friends who had created a very similar carsharing service in Lesná, Brno. They had a nice Ford Focus. After a year, we agreed that it made sense to combine both systems. However, the folks from Autodružstvo wanted better cars, so we bought a used VW Sharan in a family configuration. More people joined, people who found this way of carsharing meaningful, and we grew to over a hundred members. The fleet grew as well.
Then in 2011, we decided to institutionalize the system, formed a cooperative, and transferred the activities from our original civic association. Our task was to overcome the “technological threshold” and implement professional communication technology for sharing. That became possible in spring 2014, thanks to the selfless help of our Austrian friends from Caruso car sharing. Incidentally, the company ZEMTU OG later spun off from that group. We still use their software today, and in 2017, we won second place with them in Austria’s “Constantinus Awards” for innovative companies.
Autonapul today
Today, in 2025, Autonapul continues to grow and inspires thousands of people to think more critically about how they move around, whether from the perspective of family or business budgets, or from the viewpoint of the impact on our living environment. I’m proud of that, and I know we still have a lot of work ahead, and a bright future.
