Bluecar EV Sharing for Paris

We are confident most of you are pretty familiar with the bike rental services available in some of the European countries. If you're not, here's a quick sum-up: bikes are spread throughout cities, at specific locations, and can be used by anyone with a subscription. Now, a similar scheme is being planned for electric cars in Paris, where the bike sharing system called Velib is a big hit.

Somewhat similar to a car sharing service, the future Autolib, as it is called, will be a lot cheaper than using the vehicles of a car sharing company. Being funded by the city, the 3,000 EVs to be deployed in France's capital could be rented for short trips for as little as EUR12/month (the catch is that the EUR12 subscription only allows you to get into the car; each half hour of travel costs an extra EUR5 to EUR6, as a means to encourage short trips).

The cars to be used in the Autolib program are the Bluecars, the models developed by Pininfarina for Bollore. This model is a four-seater five-door vehicle powered by Lythium Metal Polymere (LMP) batteries, with a range of 250km (155 miles) and a top speed of 130 km/h (80mph).

The LMP can be recharged using an usual socket and takes a few hours to reach full capacity. The battery has a 200,000 km life span and does not require any maintenance during this period.

Mass production of the model will take place between 2011 and 2017, with the forecast output by 2015 being of about 60,000 units.