Throughout the world people join forces to build the kind of economy that we want to see. We share our homes, our cars, our knowledge, our time and our money. SnappCar is a Dutch platform offering a mediation service for those who want to rent their car to others and for those who want to rent a car. With this service SnappCar creates more consumer value, but it also asks for active consumer participation. Ronald Kleverlaan of CrowdfundingHub indicated SnappCar as the number one amongst all crowd-funding projects last year. The crowd-funding yielded more than half a million Euros through crowd-funding!

According to SnappCar, every day 23 million cars are not driving for 23 hours a day in Europe. This is waste of products, space and money, especially because a lot of people cannot afford to have a car themselves. SnappCar’s mission for 2018 is to have 1% less cars in Europe, which will lead to a reduction in CO2-emision as a result of the production of cars. SnappCar thinks they can make this impact by letting car owners earn money by renting their car to others for shorter periods of time.

They idea is very simple, you have something that costs a lot of money and you only use it for a small amount of time, so why not rent this product to others, to earn some money back? Besides the money you earn, you also help others by providing them your car for a lower price then the traditional car rental agency. As stated on Snappcar’s website “You will live a more conscious life and you meet friendly people in your neighborhood.” SnappCar provides all-risk insurance, 24/7 road assistance, contracts, payments and a trustworthy community, as to ensure that participants do not have to worry paperwork and other negative side effects.

SnappCar is a user-friendly platform as it provides all the information you need when renting a car. As you can see below on the images, it has information about the car owner, the average rating, the price per day, some images of the car itself and the specifications of the car. It is also possible to read some reviews or post a review yourself after borrowing a car. These reviews and ratings help other users make their decision to rent a car more easily. In the United States, SnappCar just received as one of the first Dutch companies a B Corporation certification. B Lab awards this label to companies that achieve solving social and environmental goals.

A major negative effect of the car sharing platforms is that traditional companies such as car manufacturers, car dealers, but most of all car rental agencies will face a potentially huge decline in sales. This counts for other sharing platforms such as Airbnb as well, but in the end the big winners of the sharing economy are the consumer as they can easily get cheaper products and services. But in order to achieve this result renting the products should be as easy as owning the product!

http://www.nu.nl/weekend/3905769/de-deeleconomie-wordt-deelmaatschappij.html

https://www.snappcar.nl/snappcar-in-het-nieuws

http://www.telegraaf.nl/dft/ondernemen/socialezaken/23819780/__SnappCar_goed_op_weg__.html

http://feb.kuleuven.be/eng/ew/Articles%20press/2013/JK_DeStandaard_250513.pdf