If you have ever watched a James Bond movie, and hasn’t, then you will have probably noticed the narrow streets and tiny cars in European cities. If you are lucky enough to be in Paris over the next couple of months you might get a glimpse of the small car future. We like to call it the bubble car, but its real name is the BlueCar.
Here is what it is. The BlueCar is an electrically powered car that Paris is making available for rentals. When we say short term, we mean it, as in by the half hour. The project is called Autolib and in a testing phase for the next to months.
The project has an initial cost of around $321 million dollars with the city itself investing $47 million, much of the rest of the money comes from billionaire Vincent Bollore, whose company won the bidding for the project and makes the BlueCar.
The way it works is that people must purchase a membership to be eligible to use the cars. Once registered, they can rent a car at any station for around 4-8 euros per half hour. Dropping off and picking up cars at charging stations will be a simply process run by Bollore’s company.
The project is the brainchild of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe. He came up with the idea after the success of his other brainchild, the Velib, a scheme that involved renting out bicycles that was so successful other cities copied the idea. We are still waiting for the plan that rents out skateboards.
While open to tourist, the plan is geared towards those who live in Paris and don’t own cars or rely on the the public transportation system.
They have an ambition plan. The idea is to redefine how people think about cars. Instead of buying them they want people to see them as something they use when needed but don’t need all the time. The first run will be 66 cars with 33 charging stations but will rapidly expand to 3,000 cars and over 1,000 stations.
The project has gained the attention of the auto industry. Nissan, Renault and Daimler have invested heavily in similar cars and want to see how they do. If the program does well, the other manufacturers may make a big push for their own electric cars. Other cities as well might be interested in the plan as well and London has tested out a very small scale version of the plan.
It’s ironic that tiny, 4 person (barely) car is made by Italian auto maker Pininfarina, the makers of Ferrari and Maserati. So maybe BlueCar isn’t a high powered sports car but Mayor Delanoe fully expects it to modernize transportation.
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