LONDON ELECTRIC CAR REVOLUTION
CAR-SHARING SERVICE AND 6,000 CHARGING POINTS IN BID TO CLEAN UP AIR GOLDSMITH: ALL NEW VANS AND CABS MUST BE BATTERY-POWERED
A £100 MILLION electric car revolution to turn London into the “green driving” capital of the world and clean up its dangerously polluted air will be launched this week.
The ambitious plans involve a massive overhaul of London’s network of notoriously unreliable charging points and the start of a city-wide electric car sharing service by early next year, it can be revealed today.
They come as Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, who yesterday took the first step to a mayoral bid, said it was “extraordinary” that there are not more electric vehicles on the capital’s streets and called for all new minicabs and delivery vans to be electric-powered.
Responsibility for transforming the use of electric cars in London has been given to French firm Bolloré, behind the successful four-year-old Autolib scheme in Paris — which is used by 220,000 drivers.
A right-hand-drive version of the Autolib cars painted in “double-decker bus red” will be revealed in central London on Friday by Vincent Bolloré, the operator’s chairman and chief executive. He will announce ambitions to have 6,000 charging points across London and as many as 3,000 battery-powered cars on the roads here by 2018.
Currently there are just 1,400 places to “fill up” electric cars in the “Source London” network Boris Johnson set up in 2011 but up to 40 per cent are out of action at any time.
A fleet of about 50 cars, each with a range of up to 150 miles, will be launched by the start of 2016 and available to rent for approximately £5 per half hour. Drivers will have to join the yet-unnamed scheme for an annual subscription, likely to
be about £100 a year. The cars can be driven from point to point and do not have to be returned to the space where they were picked up.
The move follows a series of reports in the Evening Standard about how adopting green technology can help to improve Londoners’ lives by curbing killer air pollution. The Standard is hosting a major debate on June 30 to discuss possible technological fixes for London’s environmental challenges. It is chaired by Kirsty Wark, of BBC’s Newsnight, and sponsored by French energy efficiency group Engie.
Julien Varin, spokesman for Bolloré’s green technology arm BlueSolutions, said he expected the scheme to prove popular with young Londoners who struggle to afford a car.
He told the Standard: ”Lots of people aged 18 to 25 are using the cars to go out for the evening with their friends. They might use them to go to a nightclub, dinner or the theatre. Some make love in the cars. They use them like a hotel. You can use them for anything.”
He added: “We are sure it will work in London and expect London to be bigger than Paris. It won’t be quite the same as Paris as English people are different but we have four years’ experience in Paris and that will help us.”
Christophe Arnaud, director of Blue- point London, the Bolloré subsidiary running the charging point network, said he hoped t he scheme would become known as “Boris Cars” because “if this happens we know we have the authorities officially behind us”.
He said one of the biggest obstacles in London was securing access deals with all the 27 town halls involved in the Source London network. So far five have been signed — with Kensington and Chelsea, Greenwich, Hackney, Southwark and Sutton — but it is hoped 15 will be on board by the year’s end.
About 100 charging points are currently being repaired or replaced, with the aim of having 99 per cent working at any time, he said.
Autolib is credited with taking an estimated 31,000 petrol or diesel cars off the streets of Paris.
In the Commons yesterday Richmond Park Mr Goldsmith called for a “revolution in electric car ownership”.
He told a debate on London air pollution: “Despite falling costs, the fact that getting around in electric cars is dramatically cheaper than conventional alternatives and the installation of 1,400 new charging points in the past three years — a consequence of the Mayor’s intervention — that revolution simply has not happened.
“It will inevitably happen. The market dictates that it will but the market needs a boost.”