Client: Bolt
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Year: 2025
Sector: Mobility Survey · Behaviour Change · Micromobility
Does using a car-sharing app actually make people drive their own car less? A roughly 2,000-person, three-language survey put a number on it.
Car-sharing services claim to reduce private car dependency, but the claim is easy to make and hard to prove. This survey asked Bolt Drive’s own users directly, in their own language, what the service actually changed about how they get around.
A quantitative survey of Bolt Drive users in Tallinn, run in January 2025 across Estonia’s three main language communities — Estonian, English, and Russian — reflecting the city’s actual population mix.
A 14-question survey collected roughly 2,060 responses, weighted by language-group share to represent Tallinn’s population, covering usage patterns, car-ownership decisions, and attitudes toward car-sharing as an alternative to ownership. A supporting total-cost-of-ownership model for petrol, diesel, and electric cars contextualised the affordability angle behind the survey findings.
Delivered as a Tableau-built dashboard set, with a detailed question-by-question breakdown alongside summary and headline-chart reports.
- 27.3% of respondents say they use their personal car less often since using Bolt Drive — a real, if modest, mode-shift effect; only 2.8% report using their car more.
- Car-sharing shapes ownership decisions more than daily habits: among households that recently changed car ownership, 41.9% say Bolt Drive had at least some influence on their decision to sell a car, and of those not planning to buy one, 41.1% cite Bolt Drive as a high influence on that choice.
- 67.4% agree or strongly agree that a car-sharing service can be a genuine alternative to owning a car.
- The dominant use case isn’t novelty — it’s substitution alongside other transport: the top reason for use was “as an additional mobility option instead of using my car, in combination with other transport” (34.6%), ahead of pure convenience or cost.
- Commuting is the single biggest use occasion (50%), followed by visiting friends and family (45.7%) — evidence the service is embedded in everyday routines, not just weekend/leisure use.
Gave Bolt quantified, population-weighted evidence for its mode-shift and car-ownership-substitution claims — the kind of data that supports both product positioning and conversations with cities about car-sharing’s role in reducing private vehicle dependency.