Bolloré to launch London electric car sharing scheme next year
Wed 10 June 2015
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Bolloré, the company behind Paris’s Autolib’ car-sharing service, has announced that a similar £100m scheme will be rolled out in London from early in 2016. Ten of the electric cars used in the service were unveiled in the capital recently, painted the same distinctive red as the iconic London buses.
Bolloré hopes to replicate the success the Paris Autolib scheme which is used by 220,000 people and has been credited with taking an estimated 31,000 petrol or diesel cars off the streets of Paris. From 2016 the first 50 cars are to be rolled out, increasing to 3,000 vehicles by 2018. The vehicles are expected to be available to rent for approximately £5 per half hour. Drivers will have to join the scheme for an annual subscription, reported by the Evening Standard to be about £100 a year.
London currently has 1,400 EV charging points in the ‘Source London’ network set up by Boris Johnson in 2011. Bolloré will look to expand this network to 6,000 charging points.
Julien Varin, a spokesman for Bolloré, said he expected the scheme to prove popular with young drivers: ”Lots of people aged 18 to 25 are using the cars to go out for the evening with their friends. We are sure it will work in London and expect London to be bigger than Paris.”
Christophe Arnaud, Managing Director of Bolloré's 'green' technology operations in the UK, Bluepoint London, brought the latest news on the group's plans to the recent LowCVP Annual Conference. He appeared on the Mobilty in Future Cities panel, chaired by BBC Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin.
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