IT HAS one of the world’s biggest and most popular bicycle rental schemes, but Paris has now brought the idea a step further with the launch of its long-awaited electric car-sharing project.
Some 250 of the four-seat vehicles hit the roads of the French capital on Monday. New cars will be added each month, with officials hoping to have 3,000 cars and 1,200 stations in place within a year.
Under the Autolib system – inspired by the Vélib bike rental scheme – users can take a “Bluecar” at one station and drop it off at another. Standard subscriptions cost €10 a day, €15 a week or €144 a year, with hourly fees running from €4 to €9.
The city’s socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, described it as “a revolution” that would improve quality of life in the city. “A little more than four years ago, when we introduced the Vélib, it was an innovation as well as a risk, and it was met with scepticism and sarcasm,” he said.
Paris and its suburbs are now dotted with around 1,800 docking stations holding more than 20,000 of the grey bikes.
Autolib is a collaboration between Italian car designer Pininfarina, the regional council and French conglomerate Groupe Bolloré, which hopes to use the “Bluecar” to showcase its Lithium Metal Polymer battery, which powers the car.
Several other cities already have car-share schemes, but Paris officials say theirs is the first to deploy an all-electric fleet using the new generation of batteries, which can hold a charge up to five times longer than other cells. “It will mean fewer parked cars, less traffic and less pollution,” Mr Delanoë said.
To get going, users swipe a magnetised card against a driver’s-side window to open the door, and a key tethered to the steering column starts the car.
“The city’s first interest is fighting air pollution. These cars not only don’t emit carbon dioxide but they don’t emit localised exhaust fumes either – and they don’t make noise,” said Sylvain Marty, who heads Autolib.
Officials say a full charge will provide a range of up to 250 kilometres in the city. “I personally tried driving it more than four hours, in traffic, with the heat on full and I wasn’t able to get it below 70 per cent charge,” said Mr Marty. “For city use, that’s more than enough.”
Groupe Bolloré says at least 80,000 subscribers are needed for the programme to be profitable, and it expects to reach that target in seven years. Some 2,800 people had signed up as of yesterday, and the first crash involving a “Bluecar” was reported yesterday, when a pedestrian was hit by one of the cars.
Autolib met strong resistance from a number of Paris district councils. Environmentalists have criticised the project for promoting car culture, saying it will tempt some commuters away from public transport and that more cars on the road will make traffic – and pollution – worse.
The Green Party has lamented that, by increasing demand for cheap electricity from France’s nuclear plants, the “Bluecar” will further stymie its campaign to wean the country off nuclear power.