Bubble cars to provide jolt to Paris motoring
PARIS |
PARIS (Reuters) – Bubble-shaped vehicles will appear on Paris streets next week which billionaire entrepreneur Vincent Bollore hopes will help clear the traffic-clogged arteries of the French capital as well as providing a charge to his nascent battery business.
The electrically powered Autolib cars will be available for hire in a two-month trial starting October 2 at 4 to 8 euros per half hour to motorists prepared to pay a membership fee starting at 10 euros for a day of driving.
The 235 million euro ($321 million) project is the brainchild of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who hopes to duplicate the success of Velib, the bicycle-sharing scheme he launched in 2007 and which has been copied by several cities in France and abroad.
It’s also a potential showcase for Bollore’s eponymous industrial conglomerate, which is making the BlueCar vehicles involved in the scheme and which are based on a lithium-metal-polymer battery, a different technology from the lithium-ion batteries other car makers are using.
The scheme echoes increasingly popular car clubs such as City Car which allow members to hire a local car for as little as an hour at a time.
“We want to persuade people to shift from the concept of owning a car to that of using a car,” Autolib General Manager Morald Chibout told Reuters.
The city of Paris has spent 35 million euros ($47.8 million) in building the car rental stations, while neighboring communes have contributed 50,000 for each station.
The Bollore group, which has invested 200 million euros in the project, will pay a 750 euros annual fee for each car space.
Taking a cue from the success of Velib, the project is aimed at reducing the need for the private cars that hog Parisian boulevards as well as offering locals and visitors a chance to discover electric cars.
LARGE SCALE RIVALS
The service will debut next week with 66 cars and 33 stations throughout Paris, but will expand to 3000 vehicles and more than 1000 stations by the end of 2012.
The project gets underway as top automakers are also testing the market’s enthusiasm for electric cars on a large scale in Europe. Renault SA and its Japanese sister company Nissan Motor Co, which have invested 4 billion euros in developing electric vehicles, have begun selling a few such cars already, while mass volume production and sales are set to kick off in 2012.
Bollore’s cars are being manufactured exclusively for the car-sharing service.
First unveiled at the 2005 Geneva
Article source: PRNewswire
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