From Mattias Jägerskog in Gothenburg, Sweden:

“This is huge: Hertz renting cars becomes free of charge ridesharing cars – and Skjutsgruppen becomes a first of its kind search engine in Europe!

We’ve been working with this for a couple of months and it’s rolling out right now. We want to be modest with saying “Europe” instead of “The world”, since we’re not sure if anything similiar has been done in the US or other places.

For the first time in Europe: public transportation, ridesharing and free renting cars in the same search engine.

Since earlier the non-profit ridesharing movement Skjutsgruppen has shown both public transportation and privately owned vehicles in the same search engine. Now, for the first time in Europe, the renting cars of Hertz Sweden will become free of charge ridesharing cars. From this October private individuals are offered to drive back the renting cars for free – and by the philosophy of Skjutsgruppen fill up all empty seats. And besides this, everybody that rent a car from Hertz will be offered the chance to fill up the rest of the seats with ridesharers.

– Our cars need to go back to their point of origin and usually have four or more empty seats. To offer both the car and the seats free of charge to the Skjutsgruppen movement is both good for the environment and for the individuals, says Anders Tärnell, marketing director at Hertz Sweden.

The free of charge renting cars are now among the search results at www.skjutsgruppen.nu together with all the public transportation in Sweden and the ridesharing offers of private individuals. To gather both the public sector, the private sector and the civil society like this in the same search engine is unique in Europe.

Skjutsgruppen is a non-profit ridesharing movement that gathers over 60 000 participants. The movement emphasizes the importance of both private- and public sector meeting civil society.
– Ridesharing means to cooperate. Our 60 000 participants are sharing “dormant resources”, or in other words idle capacity, in their private vehicles. Now we do the same thing with the renting cars of Hertz by filling up all the empty seats, says Mattias Jägerskog, founder of the non-profit ridesharing movement Skjutsgruppen.

With start this October everybody who rent a car from Hertz Sweden will be offered to fill up the rest of the seats with ridesharers from Skjutsgruppen. Starting today the participants of Skjutsgruppen are offered to drive back the renting cars of Hertz to their point of origin – free of charge.

See how it works live at Skjutsgruppen.

Here is the pressrelease in Swedish.