Paris's Autolib EV-sharing system moved one step closer to reality this week with a new deal that will see Italian luxury brand Pininfarina produce the models.
Pininfarina announced March 10 that it has signed a deal with Bollore, the company charged with providing the electric vehicles for the Autolib scheme, allowing production of the vehicles to begin at its factory in Italy.
The cars in question will be derived from the Pininfarina Bluecar, a project unveiled in 2008 at the Paris Motor Show which was selected last December as the car to be offered to the public by the Autolib scheme.
Pininfarina said that it would produce 4,000 of the vehicles (though 3,000 was the number previously quoted for the scheme), which have a top speed of around 130 km/h and a range of up to 250 kilometers.
The Autolib system is set to go live later this year and is likely to be the world's largest EV car-sharing scheme, modeled on the ground-breaking Velib bikeshare scheme introduced in the French capital in 2007.
It will cost €12 monthly to subscribe to the car-sharing scheme, with a further hourly charge for the vehicles expected to be €5 for the first 30 mins, €4 for the next 30 and €6 for the third.
Electric car rental schemes are becoming increasingly popular in Europe - last month ZenCar launched in the Belgian capital Brussels, offering EV car rentals from €9 per month.
Europe's largest EV-sharing scheme is currently the Move About program, which offers 80 vehicles to around 1,000 subscribers in Oslo, Norway, Gothenburg, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark.
http://www.autolib-paris.fr/
http://www.moveabout.net/
http://www.zencar.eu
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