Electric car version of Boris Bikes launched by French firm

An electric car version of ‘Boris Bikes’ has been launched in London by a French firm which has pledged to quadruple the number of charging points in the capital.

Motorists will be able to hire the new electric cars from £2.50 for fifteen minutes, £5 for 30 minutes or £10 per hour under the new car-sharing scheme.

The first electric Bluecars have been in trial around the capital with 100 set to be in place within the year rising to 3,000 in total.

They will be right hand drive to take account of Britons driving on the left.

But before that, the company has been given the challenge of boosting the chronic shortage of electric car charging points in London – and the vast number of electric leads required by drivers when they do find one that’s free or working.

France’s Bolloré Group has been awarded the contract by Transport for London to run, improve and massively expand the network of charging points in the UK capital to address the biggest hurdle to a wider take-up of electric cars.

It aims to spend £60million a year but to break even within six years – or possibly in half that time if its experience doing a similar car-sharing and charging point in Paris can be replicated.

Currently there are just 1,400 electric car charging points in the capital. Bollore’s aim is to more than double that by adding a further 1,500 by early next year and then double it again to 6,000 by 2018.

The scheme is to be run by Bolloré’s subsidiary IER which already runs the Autolib electric car-sharing service in Paris. It will now take control of the SourceLondon scheme in the UK capital.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: ‘These are ambitious and exciting plans that will take Source London and electric car sharing in our city to the next level.

‘We’re going to see more charging points popping up across London, which will drive the take-up of these cleaner, greener machines and help to reduce air pollution too.’… see more

source: Dailymail UK

Tags: Electric cars, firm, France, technology

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