For the one third of Londoners who do not have a car, and those others in the capital for whom motoring is an expensive, if necessary, evil, a public electric car hire scheme is to be launched.
Paris already has Autolib – a pool of 2,000 electric cars sited across Paris and its suburbs, which drivers are able to rent at any time. Bolloré, the company behind the French capital’s car sharing network is to provide up to 3,000 new electric rental cars for London by 2016.
“An electric car, but cheap”
It seems likely that users of the scheme will pay a monthly membership fee, and then pay around £5 to rent the electric car for each half hour. In common with London’s Boris Bikes, the electric hire car scheme will be a point-to-point rental.
At the unveiling of the plans for London, Vincent Bolloré said: “Until now, the electric car is a toy of the happy few: it’s very expensive and does not have the autonomy of a normal car. We have designed a car that is cheap: a beautiful, real car, with four seats, but cheap.”
What are the real benefits of an electric car hire scheme?
The London electric car hire scheme has been described as Boris Cars, but it is unlikely to have anywhere near the same impact as the Boris Bikes. It’s real benefit will be as a PR exercise for the city and electric cars. Public transport and cycling in the centre of London is so efficient that electric cars cannot hope to compete. From an environmental perspective, the move towards hybrid electric taxis as a replacement for the current diesel-powered fleet will have far more benefit.
Crankwinder
Would be useful if more milk-float than a mini. To seat a family of five okay, but with a rear bench seat that folds totally flat to make a big load space for when you have to shift stuff too big to take on a bike or the bus. Like that bed you found on gumtree, etc. And this mini-van wouldn’t have to be capable of more than 30mph, because it’s not often you can go that fast in London anyway. THAT’s the kind of vehicle Londoner’s need occasional access to: for those jobs that public transport, bikes and feet can’t do.
Will Mowlam
This needs to be price competetive compared with Zipcar to work well – they are dominant. Also if anyone’s interested I recently noticed a company called Per hire in Reading that have started doing the BMW i3 for a weekly price of just over 250. Looks reasonable bearing in mind electricity is 10% the price of petrol. So for me my average weekly of 300 miles will cost under 10 quid at home, or nothing at all if just using the public 30min rapid chargers on the motorways.