Prague to Bologna and a CZK 46,000 meal: Bolt users went to extremes in 2021

Users of mobility app Bolt went to some extremes in 2021, with one passenger taking a 911 kilometer ride from Prague to Bologna, Italy, and racking up a bill of CZK 15,500. That trip makes the longest one within Czechia – a mere 208 km – look like a walk in the park.

Prague is known for its comprehensive public transit, which can get people anywhere, day or night. But some people just prefer to be chauffeured around, like one Prague patron who took 860 Bolt rides. That’s that about 2.4 per day, not taking into account weekends or vacations. But it is nowhere near the international record from Baku, Azerbaijan, where one passenger ordered a Bolt car more than 1,100 times last year, or over three times daily

Shared electric scooters also saw some extreme use. The longest ride on a green Bolt scooter was almost 33 kilometers. The ride took place in Prague, where the customer went around the city for over an hour and a half. Compared to the same distance traveled by a conventional car, this saved 4 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions, according to Bolt’s figures. The most faithful Czech scooter user rented one 258 times. That again pales in international comparison, as a customer in Stockholm used one an average of three times a day, or about 1,000 times in the year.

Bolt also has a food delivery app. It launched the service in Prague in April 2020, and its users were quite active. One Czech customer had 518 food deliveries, or 1.4 a day. One can assume that person ate leftovers for most of the other meals. Another customer went for diversity, having food delivered from 132 different places. There is no word, though, on which place was their favorite.

The most expensive single order for food was CZK 40,600. That person could have taken a Bolt car to Bologna and back, and still had CZK 9,600 to spend on dinner. Czechs, though, most often ordered burgers through Bolt Food, with almost 28,000 burgers being delivered from McDonald's alone.

Czechs typically order lunch on weekdays and dinner on weekends. Meat-based meals also dominated, with vegetarian orders at less than 5 percent.

The newest of Bolt’s services - Bolt Market - has only been available in the Czech Republic since Dec. 28 in a limited area of Prague. The service delivers food items purchased from stores, within 15 minutes. The service was busy over New Year’s Eve, with sparkling wine and snack selections as popular orders.

Bolt, formerly known as Taxify, is not the only ride or food delivery app in Prague. Uber and Liftago are also popular. Meal delivery options include Wolt and Dáme jídlo, while many restaurants also deliver orders directly. Several services such as Rohlík.cz, Tomato.cz, and Everli deliver groceries.