Boris plans electric car hire scheme for London

BORIS JOHNSON is planning an electric car hire scheme for London in which users pick up a battery-powered vehicle in one part of the city and drop it off in another.

The Mayor said today he wanted to make London a "world leader" in the promotion of the environmentally-friendly vehicles.

He added: "At this stage it is important to ensure we fully understand the potential market for electric vehicles in London so that we can trigger a demand for this type of technology. My goal is for London to become the electric vehicle capital of Europe."

The plan mirrors a Paris scheme which will be in place by the end of the year.

The "Autolib" car programme, modelled on a highly successful bicycle-hire scheme, will see 4,000 electric cars sited across the French capital and its suburbs which drivers will be able to use at any time. The brainchild of its Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, it will see some 700 pick-up points established across the city, with 200 underground.

Mr Delanoë has described the scheme as "a system of individual journeys that are completely clean". The cars will be released using a credit card, or with a pre-ordered subscription card.

Mr Johnson has also announced plans to bring in 6,000 bicycles to the capital by next year to be run in a similar way to the Paris bicycle hire scheme. The Mayor has already pledged extra funding for a network of car recharging points in Westminster and has et up a forum aimed at increasing the number of electric cars. Sales of electric cars are currently small. One of the biggest problems for the scheme will be installing electric charging points, which cost £3,000 each.

Currently Westminster council has 60 charging points - 12 on the street and 48 points in car parks. However, for a London-wide blueprint experts say hundreds of charging bays would be needed.

In a Commons written answer, transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick said a total of 4,929 new battery-powered vehicles had been registered since 2004, and a total of 1,322 battery-powered cars took to the UK's roads last year, down from 1,374 in 2007.

Commenting on the plan for London, Caroline Watson, of the Energy Saving Trust, said: "This is a brilliant idea and exactly the kind of innovative leadership we need. Electric vehicles are a new, and relatively untested technology, so this would be a great way for people to test the technology. It may even be that for many Londoners, a car hire scheme which is easy to use is all they need."

In Paris, prices of €200-€250 a month are being suggested to drive up to 60 miles a day. Mr Delanoë has already doubled the projected number of cars from 2,000 to 4,000 and expanded the target area beyond the ring road. The electric cars are expected to be no bigger than Smart cars.

Mr Delanoë said: "There will be a computerised system which allows you as soon as you collect the car to announce where you'll drop it off, so there will be a parking space available."

One target group is young couples with children who occasionally need a car to shop or travel but cannot afford to run their own. Tourists would also enjoy the freedom of having a car available without having to worry about it when not in use.

But Green party councillors in Paris warned that encouraging the public to use any type of car, instead of giving incentives to stick to bikes and public transport, was a bad move.

Denis Baupin, a Green party deputy mayor said: "If this scheme encourages people to pick up these cars every day, using them to go into work and back instead of using bikes or the metro, crowding roads and changing habits, that's a problem."

At the first meeting of the London Electric Vehicle Partnership late last year, representatives of the motor and energy industries and London boroughs agreed a plan to sharply increase the use of electric cars in the city.