Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, wants to copy the “success” of the city’s bike-sharing program, Vélib, with an electric-car-sharing program, dubbed Autolib:
A total of 3,000 electric cars will be made available, distributed among over 700 stations in the city. Autolib is due to enter a test phase in June 2011, and Delanoë wants the scheme to be fully operational from September. Paris isn’t doing things by halves, says a spokesman for the city: “We want to make it a big success.”
An Autolib subscription will cost €15 ($20) a month, plus an additional €5 ($7) for every half hour that a car is used. The prices sound affordable, but the killer argument for users could prove to be the guaranteed parking. Autolib customers will never have to drive around the block again — a parking space will already be reserved for them at the depot nearest to their destination.
Three consortia are currently competing for the contract to operate Autolib on behalf of the city: the Bolloré and Véolia groups, as well as a group that includes the French state rail company SNCF and the car rental company Avis.
This analysis seems odd to me:
A car-sharing vehicle replaces, as a rule of thumb, 15 cars. So the Autolib fleet represents the equivalent of 45,000 private cars. The upkeep of a vehicle in Paris costs €7,000 a year, says Deputy Mayor Annick Lepetit. That means Autolib could save Parisians up to €315 million a year. In addition, there would be less road damage, less pollution and fewer traffic accidents, as in the medium term tens of thousands of cars would disappear from the streets.
Why would rented cars cause less road damage and fewer traffic accidents?
Anyway, the more serious concern is vandalism:
Of the 20,000 Vélib bicycles, nearly half have been destroyed. The project will turn out to be an expensive experiment for the city and the operators if the far more valuable electric cars end up in the Seine or dying somewhere along the roadside due to lack of range. That’s why, according to sources in the Paris administration, the companies bidding for the project have been asked to develop appropriate technical security measures.