This week The Guardian UK carried the news that the city of Paris is to introduce an electric car sharing scheme. The scheme will cost 100 million Euro of which the city council has offered 60 and is an extension of its 2007 bicycle sharing project known as Vĕlib, a system that has been extensively copied in other cities.

The scheme involves the purchase of 3000 electric cars designed in Italy by Pininfarina and produced in France by Bollorĕ, and the construction of 1000 recharge stations. The hope is that the scheme will further reduce car use and traffic congestion in Paris and help many Parisians to abandon car ownership.

The Guardian reports that the scheme requires between 160 and 200 000 subscribers to break even.

Although the Paris proposal looks to be the largest scale to date, several other smaller scale schemes are already in existence.

One such scheme operates in Oslo. Known as ‘Move about’ the project currently has about 1000 members and 80 electric cars and has been so successful that it has recently expanded to the cities of Gothenburg and Copenhagen. Baltimore also has a small scale scheme.

The town of Forli’ in italy also initiated a scheme in 2010 that has recently expanded to include various other Italian cities. In Milan a scheme was launched earlier this week, initially with 20 vehicles but within a project destined for expansion throughout Lombardy beginning early next year.

US car share company Zipcar also offer electric vehicles for hire by the hour, stating that their average hire covers only 25 miles and is therefore well within the range of an electric vehicle, and also have hybrid cars in their fleet, and car rental company Hertz recently announced that they are to introduce fully electric vehicles into their US fleet this very week.

(photo: Car sharing a Mestre by Carlo Felice from Flickr)