hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1830.txt

Episode: 1830
Title: HPR1830: How Holland Works: GreenWheels
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1830/hpr1830.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:51:33

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This is HPR episode 1830 entitled How Holland Works, Green Wheels.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 11 minutes long.
The summer is a quick look at the Dutch short term car sharing service.
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Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and today we're going to be doing the first in the series on How Holland Works.
I've been promising to do this one for a while and basically it's under request of David Morris.
The idea is that I will give you a taste of things that I found interesting or slightly different, not necessarily in a negative way, about the Netherlands since I moved here almost 10 years ago.
I don't know how useful is going to be because I've been very much more than 10 years now.
I've been very much duchified at this point.
But I'll do my best, I'll do my best.
For some reason I'm having a north lot of trouble recording this show so we'll attempt to plow on.
The first one I want to do is one thing that is really cool is part of the integrated transport strategy.
That's where you have trains, buses, trams arrive at the station at the same time to make it easier for people to get changed from one train to another
to park and ride services outside of cities that you can drive to and then take public transport in.
One of those is it's a fleet of rental vehicles that you can call a car sharing on their website that you can rent on a short term basis.
So instead of renting it for a day or a week you rent it for a few hours and then you just drop it back to the shared location and that's it.
It's actually pretty cool and there are lots of different locations around the Netherlands by far a lot more in the Netherlands.
They also operate in Germany and a trial that was running in England I think stopped without much success.
The cars themselves tend to be very very small it's a Pugeot 107 you can fit two passengers and the driver and sorry three passengers two in the front and two in the back.
We have a problem with three children there's not even three safety belts in the back so we can't use it for that sort of thing.
What we do use it for is if we need to bring things down to the recycling center or we can also have them come and do it.
But you know you want to pick up something heavy you book it for an hour and you just go the other evening we were invited to a wedding that was out in a state in the middle of the country and there was no public transport services available.
When we were going or indeed when we were coming back so we want to rent a few hours so that's pretty much the idea.
So I thought I'd give you a little rundown on what you need to do first thing you need to do subscribe so there are three or four different options subscriptions that you can pay.
So the cheaper one we have is five euros a month and then the running cost that we have to pay every time we rent is slightly higher.
It kind of works out to be a little bit more expensive than if you it would be more expensive to rent green wheels for a day then it would be too higher from Hertz or Davis or something like that.
But that might not necessarily be true if you take in the ability to have a second driver and that sort of thing but that is really the purpose of the green wheel service.
It's intended for short trips people can share instead of five different families have five different cars.
You can each take it for two hours during the course of all the day and get what it is that you need done so it's a pretty cool service.
So you do the subscription or when you subscribe you get a credit card sized card that's got a Norify D chip in it and associate with that is a pink code which you also get.
So then you simply go to the website so greenwheels.nl and you put in the city that you want to rent your car and the start time on the end time and then you search and it'll look next to that location.
And I put it at this picture in the show notes of this of Amsterdam Central Station for today when I'm recording the show for the 90th time and it shows you know two of the cars I think one two three four are in red so they're not available for the period that I want and the rest of them are in green.
And they have some other deals as well where you can rent it during the summer you can rent it as a rental car for a longer period of time and they also have in some of the cities hatchbacks available that are you know slightly larger so within the region within a 20 kilometer region they might have one of those cars whereas they might have 15 or 20 of the smaller cars.
So that's pretty much what you do so when you when you pick the car you by just clicking on us then you you book us and you can put in the notes to say where you were going or whatever just to remind yourself on the bill and then you get an email saying that you booked it and that's pretty much that.
So on the day that you want to rent it or in a few few hours quite often the few around here there's about five or six around where I live and if the one that you want isn't available then there's a few within 10 minutes cycle and you just cycle down to it.
And on the driver side in just behind the dashboard stuck on to the windscreen is a RFID reader and you put your card next to that and that unlocks the central locking so that allows you to get physically into the vehicle and once you enter the vehicle you still can't go away because the ignition is locked.
So in the love compartment there's a sort of controller that's got a you know a pin you know 10 digits 10 digit number pad that you can enter your pink code and once you enter your pink code and that matches with the with the pink code that they expected when they sent it down.
They have a each of the cars as its own GSM and I think they use SMS is to trigger the trigger the what the car should do so you enter your pink code and then you have to say if there's any scratches or damage so if there is any damage you know you say yes and then you fill out a logbook explaining what the damage is.
And then you either go on your way if it's just small damage or tough otherwise you you just didn't know and then you start driving the car and then says you can take the key out all the keys on a little magnetic thing this is just on the key ring so you know at that point you you just pull the key out and also in the device just in a little holder is a is a fleet service card which will get to later.
So once you have the key for the car you know the physical piece of metal key you can basically drive the car you put the key in and you drive it from A to B and when you want to park you just park and you lock it normally with the key and you walk away and you come back and as long as you're within your period everything's hunky Dory.
Every time you do stop the computer controllers that asks are you and they have you returned to the pickup point at point point you mean you just ignore normally you don't need to go yet know every single time so.
So if fuel is low in the vehicle and they ask people to make sure that they you know they keep at least half a tank of gas in the vehicle for the next customer but if you happen to be.
And the person who picks the short straw needs to for fuel then you go to the gas station or petrol station and you tank up and make note of the number of kilometers on the automator and you take the fleet card from the little compartment you bring it in you tell the person how many kilometers you traveled and you pay with the or you know they take note of the fleet card and they bill green wheels directly from.
For the fuel I think this is fairly standard in the Netherlands at least for if you have a rental car from a company you have a lot of these car hire places have have deals with the fuel petrol stations so things are good there so other things that you can do yeah basically at this point you just drive around and you will you do whatever that you want to do with your car and once you're finished and make sure that you have everything out because.
I've been a few times where if we got stuff on the car and have had to contact them and then they have to send down a short term 15 minutes higher for you at no cost so that you can open the door so anyway you're back make sure everything's out you you.
Oh take out the controller and it says are you back at your at the pickup point and you go yes I am back at the pickup point and then they say put the keys back in you put the keys back in you push the love compartment take everything out of the car and get out seems a bit strange getting out of the car leaving your key in every time it's a little bit freaky but then with your RF ID card you can go to the window RF ID reader and you click that and once you do that the central locking of the car.
Engages and basically it's available for the next customer. There are per kilometer fees for the amount of distance that you go and there are also per an hourly rate for the amount of time that you get.
That's on the subscription that we have some of the other subscriptions you pay more per month 15 yours or something like that and then you don't have to worry about those costs so you can rent it for as often.
Or as little as you like that is pretty much it we don't rent them typically for the holiday period which they a lot of people do for the holiday period you have the ability to rent them for a few weeks.
Apparently cheaper than a regular car but as we have three children and they don't fit into the back we don't tend to do that.
So that's pretty much it we don't use it very often but when we do it's kind of handy and it's a pretty cool thing it's not really rocket science but it seems to work out.
Okay well that was it. Tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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