The year 2019 is over and now it is time for a short evaluation.
It was a great year for Autonapůl. We have been growing and expanding our carsharing services, currently Autonapůl operates in 9 major cities in the Czech Republic. The fleet of shared cars in the course of 2019 consisted of 70-80 vehicles with which Autonapůl users travelled more than 1.3 million kilometres not only in the Czech Republic, but throughout Europe! Where did our users go by shared cars?
Thanks to the cooperation with the Liberec Zoo and Renault CZ, we were able to offer another opportunity to test clean 100% electric vehicles within the “Zoe in Zoo” project - currently there are electric vehicles in Brno and Liberec, we are preparing further trial projects in the Moravian-Silesian Region or Prague. We follow modern trends and when choosing new cars for our carsharing fleet we consider other cars with the lowest environmental impact. We have left Zlin so far, but we believe that we will come back and start carsharing.
In addition to the mileage driven and hours booked, the impact of car sharing on our environment is important for Autonapůl. The goal is to create space in the streets, freeing space efficiently from cars that are long standing and unused. It is important for us to build a community of like-minded people. As the number of users grows, carsharing makes sense and works not only for its users but also for cities.
A shared car can replace up to 10 private cars thanks to more efficient use. A privately owned car is typically used around 5 % of the time, while shared cars 30-50 % of the time. That's from 6 to 10 time more!
As a result, cities such as Prague and Brno continue to support carsharing with advantaged parking in resident zones. Since June 2019, similar benefits can be used by users in Pilsen in the paid zones and newly also in the resident zones of České Budějovice. We are continuing to negotiate benefits for shared cars in other cities also.
During 2019, we participated in several promotional and cultural events in various cities of the country. We spread the idea of carsharing and discussed Autonapůl topics. The very successful for us were European Mobility Week and Car Free Day, Expat Fair, Zažít město jinak (The Different City Experience), Ekojarmark (Eco-Fair) Olomouc, Earth Day, Pure mobility Day or Mash Up in Impact Hub. We got involved in the challenge Bike to Work. We introduced ourselves at a panel discussion Boost with Facebook Brno and we took place at Redbull Basement Hatch Camp in Prague.
Preliminary financial results for 2019, which promise EBITDA of more than CZK 3 million, are good news. And thanks to the steady profit of the handwash facility, Autonapůl will be close to accounting profit. So "black numbers", which also means full coverage of depreciation of cars. Total revenues for 2019 will be around CZK 11-12 million.
In nearly all cities covered by Autonapůl, we organized a personal meeting with users last year. Discussions also took place within the user community. We also received opinions on the functioning of Autonapůl through polls on social networks and a newsletter. We want our users to be able to participate in deciding the changes we are preparing. We have changed the visual style of our communication, we are more active on social networks and we continue writing the blog Autonapůl.
Cooperation with our partners is important for us. At the end of the year, we joined the Slušná firma (Decent Firm) platform - movement for more sustainable business, which connects Czech and Slovak organizations based on the principles of responsibility and decency. We have also been involved in prestigious research with University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Ústí nad Labem and Faculty of Transportation Science of Czech Technical University in Prague. It served to identify traffic behavior and promote modern and environmentally friendly mobility services.
The year 2019 was full of challenges and work on everyday things that improve the quality of our service. We support Záchranka (A Life-Saving Mobile App), fighters for sustainable mobility in Prague Auto*Mat, Žižkov Night Music Festival or Swap Prague and Nebouram.cz activities. Meetings with Autonapůl users and other interested parties and cooperation with partners such as Rekola bikesharing are an encouragement for further activities.
The goal for 2020 is to improve the availability of Autonapůl in our cities, add dozens of new cars, launch a new tuned mobile application, strengthen our users' community and promote the idea of carsharing across the society. Creating space for people. Together.
