Paris goes for electric cars

There are quite a few voices which say that the economic recession that the Western world is going through is just a symptom of a much bigger crisis which has at least three sides to it: the increase of food prices, the energy crisis and the ecologic disaster, directly related with the incidence of the human race in the acceleration of global warming (at the current pace, ice will have disappeared completely from the North Pole in summer in just a few decades), to which our governments, hostages of the interests of the large multinational corporations, don’t seem to do nothing about (the recent climate summit in Durban was unable to carry out an agreement limiting toxic emissions from the countries, like in all other previous ones, postponing ‘sine die’ the problem, despite that according to most experts we’re running out of time).

The worst seems to be once more the insistence on behalf of the authorities and official bodies in denying this problem and persisting in maintaining this great farce. And so, while the ecological organizations like Greenpeace regretted the umpteenth triumph of the great contaminators at the end of the summit over the interests of the citizens and the planet, the UN Secretary for climate change didn’t hesitate in qualifying its results as extraordinary and saluting the world in a way which seemed to inaugurate a new and hopeful era.

In this context, and although clearly insufficient, we can just welcome initiatives such as the one of the city of Paris of offering 300 electrical rental vehicles -the Bluecar, which run on a battery of lithium and polymers- following a system similar to the public bicycles (the Vélib), another of the great ideas that the French capital was a pioneer of, and which is still largely successful in most part of the cities where it’s been applied with good will, and not just as a quick makeover towards the outside without any interest of it really working, such as the regrettable and thankfully minority case of Valencia.

They expect that this system, called Autolib, will contribute on the long run that at least 25,000 cars go off the streets of the capital and its surrounding areas, consequently improving the traffic and the levels of contamination.

It’s an audacious and innovative gamble whose first phase initiated three months ago and which aspires to create a following and to be imitated in most main cities in the world. In Paris and the 44 locations of the Île-de-France area who have joined the project, they calculate that every electric rental car will avoid the circulation of at least five private vehicles.

The number of initial electric cars, distributed in 250 stationary points, will have to multiply itself by 10 in a year’s time, so that there will be 1100 rental points with an average of five vehicles each.

Paul Oilzum

Equipped with a GPS, the Bluecars reach 80 mph and have up to 155 miles of autonomy. You might want to enjoy its advantages when you rent apartments in Paris

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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