AutoLib is one year old. On 5 December 2011, the city of Paris and 47 other municipalities in the metropolitan belt scored a double blow against air pollution: a car sharing service, and moreover with electric cars. A successful service, and achieved thanks to the Italian know-how.
Le 1.750 Bluecars, owned by the French entrepreneur Vincent Bolloré and built in Italy by Pininfarina, in fact, they work at full capacity 24 hours a day, 24 days a week, with a range of 7 kilometres, 7 parking stations, 250 electrical outlets for recharging the car batteries. And above all they already have almost 720 subscribers and have been rented 800 times a year, especially by a young audience (one in three users is between 25 and 34 years old), on average for 40 minutes and 9km at a time.
So the satisfaction of Bolloré is natural, protagonist of a large investment in close collaboration with an Italian company, Pininfarina, which designed the cars, and the Turin Cecomp which produces between 100 and 150 each month, employing about fifty workers, before sending them to the Vaucresson warehouse in France. "I am proud to have contributed to making Turin's industry and Pininfarina's design the real protagonists in the success of this world premiere", said the transalpine businessman, who, among other things, with his group has repurchased the 50% that Pininfarina held in the joint company VEBP (Vehicules Electriques Pininfarina Bollorè) created in 2007. Company that continues to hold a Pininfarina licence.
The satisfaction, however, is all shared by the users. According to a market survey conducted by Csa, in fact, 95% of users say they are satisfied with the service, judging it practical, simple and fluid. 93% are satisfied with the reservation and the parking spaces. 84% of users are ready to recommend Autolib to a friend, 80% say it's a useful way to save money on their budgets. One in 3 customers even states that the Bluecar has become their main car, 72% of customers who do not have a car say they do not want to buy their own, while 33% of customers who own their own car even say ready to resell it.
But it is above all the environment that smiles: the Bluecar fleet with over 8 million kilometers made it possible to avoid the dispersion of 870.000 kg of CO2 in the environment, the equivalent of the absorption of 174.000 trees and will make it possible to reduce the number of private cars circulating in Paris by 22.500 units, notoriously one of the most polluted cities in Europe and in the world.
