Several European countries have cycle loan/hire
systems in the major cities. The idea that you can pick up a bicycle, ride
across town and leave it at a drop off for someone else to use is very
attractive. Paris had a false start with theirs until the introduced their hire
system known as Velib which has been very successful. Paying, with checks and
balances seems to work well, better than a simple free system.
Now Paris is looking to extend the concept to
electric mini-cars (1). The plan is called Autolib and will be trialed for a
short period. The concept is short hires of up to 30 minutes, so the idea is for
shopping or business trips rather than a vacational road trip. They are starting
with 66 cars and there will be 33 charging stations for a four-hour charge when
they run down.
Of course, as its in Paris, the styling is trés chic with cool Italian styling from studio of Pininfarina
so there will be no reason why the beautiful people amongst us can’t be seen using
them.
I hope the system works and it spreads over here. I
wonder how the insurance works out though. Maybe it can be included in a
general plan, but somehow I think that’ll be a policy too far.
