I've been talking a lot about the sharing economy recently and how I feel its a great solution to over consumption and wastefulness. Sadly today the Paris city council voted to end Autolib, the electric car sharing scheme that they put in place in 2011. I was one of the first subscribers to the system and I thought it was an ideal answer to the 2 big Paris issues of Parking and Pollution (and as a bonus Noise). It seems the 150,000 subscribers did not use it regularly enough or for sufficiently long trips and therefore it was not making economic sense. I think there were probably other factors: the cars were often dirty, they were a bit plasticy and flimsy compared to normal modern cars, you had to have a subscription. All of these issues are things that might have been fixed if the city and the operator could have had a constructive discussion rather then using mutual recrimination. As a counter example the two companies that operate electric scooters in Paris are doing well, adding vehicles and operating a great service even though they do not benefit from any city assistance. I trust that a new solution will be found as I still believe shared electric cars will be an integral part of the future of urban transport.
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