What is Carpool?
Anyone who regularly tests press cars juggles many things at once: handover dates, technical data, embargoes, their own measurements, filming locations, texts for presenting and video descriptions – and finally the proof for the manufacturer of where and with what reach the car was covered.
Carpool brings this work together. It grew out of the day-to-day editorial work of ausfahrt.tv, a German automotive channel, and is used by several editorial teams today. The user interface is in German.
Features
Press cars and vehicle data
Every press car with loan period, equipment, price and technical data. Master data can be taken over from a vehicle database when the car is created; the editorial team adds its own measurements. Embargoes are kept with the vehicle.
Texts and templates
Data sheet, presenter text, CO₂ statement and custom templates: Carpool fills in the vehicle’s values – ready to copy into a video description or article.
Travel, expenses and filming locations
Trips to press drives and tests with dates, destination and the press cars driven, marked as open or settled; the annual report is the basis for travel expense claims. Filming locations with GPS position, pictures and suitability (whole video or presenter shots only) on a map – shared with colleagues if desired.
Coverage and reporting
Posts from the team’s own channels are assigned to the press car by drag and drop. This produces a report with the reach of every post, which the editorial team sends to the manufacturer itself.
Registrations and recalls
New registrations based on data from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) as charts, plus recalls per model.
Graphics for video
Size comparison of two models to scale, CO₂ overlays and lower thirds as ready-to-use image files.
Also: calendar, short notes and helper accounts for the team.
All screenshots show sample data of a fictitious editorial team.
Connected channels – what data Carpool reads and why
For reporting, Carpool needs the editorial team’s own published posts. Users add their channels in the settings or connect them with their account. For all channels:
- Carpool is read-only – it never publishes, edits or deletes anything on the channels and sends no messages.
- It reads title, description, date, link, thumbnail and counts (views, likes, number of comments) – no comment texts, no messages, no follower lists.
- The data is used solely to assign posts to press cars and to create the report. It is visible only to the user’s own editorial team and is never sold, used for advertising or passed on to third parties.
- Every connection can be removed at any time – see Data deletion.
| Channel | How it is connected | What is read |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | YouTube Data API (YouTube API Services by Google), public data only, no sign-in required | Videos and Shorts of the channel with counts |
| Instagram Graph API by Meta (Business Discovery), public information of professional accounts, no sign-in required | Posts and Reels with counts | |
“Connect with Facebook” (Facebook Login); permissions pages_show_list, pages_read_engagement, pages_read_user_content | Posts of the selected Pages the user manages, with reactions and number of comments | |
| TikTok | “Connect with TikTok” (TikTok Login Kit); scopes user.info.basic, video.list | Display name, avatar, the user’s own videos with counts |
| Blog | WordPress REST API or RSS/Atom feed, public | Articles with title, date and featured image |
Who is Carpool for?
Carpool is a closed tool for automotive journalists, editorial teams and their helpers. There is no public sign-up; log42 GmbH grants access on request.
Contact: jan [at] log42 [dot] com
Who is behind it?
log42 GmbH in Bielefeld, Germany, develops and operates Carpool. Its managing director is Jan Gleitsmann, who has been reporting on cars with ausfahrt.tv for many years. Carpool runs on its own server in Finland (EU), without advertising, tracking or analytics.
Your data
Anyone who has connected a channel can remove the connection at any time in Carpool or on the network itself and have their data deleted. How to remove a connection and have your data deleted · Privacy policy