Tel Aviv In A Twizy Over Car Sharing
After launching a successful bicycle sharing service, Tel Aviv is looking to launch an electric car program using the same model, as a means of reducing private car ownership.
While Better Place, Israel’s best-known electric car startup, has grander ambitions about a word of zero-emissions motoring, the concerns or Tel Aviv are much simpler. Ha’Aretz reports that the car sharing program was envisioned as a solution to the typical problems surrounding urban mobility.
Ido Shamir, director of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Economic Development Authority, said car-sharing plans are attractive mainly to people who travel infrequently, “such as families that already have one car,” adding, “It reduces the number of vehicles and air pollution and frees up parking spaces.”
While several companies are expected to compete for the tender, the Renault Twizy is an obvious choice for the program. Already proven in car-sharing programs in Paris and other locales, the Twizy also benefits from Renault’s tie-up with Better Place – including their proprietary battery swap technology.
Recently, for instance, Renault launched a new service in the Paris suburb of St. Quentin that allows users to rent a Renault Twizy and park it in any legal parking space. When the battery runs low a company employee swaps the car for one with a fully charged battery.
More by Derek Kreindler
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Hadn't seen it this way, but you are absolutely correct. Another way of seeing it is as a very-short-term-vehicle rental.
Good luck. This could never work in the US; we don't like sharing cars with our spouse, let alone complete strangers.
They are at war, and remember the wartime posters in the U.S.: "If you ride alone, you ride with Hitler"? Same thing: society is overstretched.
Location, location, location. If you take public transportation to work you can get by with a Zipcar. I did it when my Escape was in the body shop. Trust me, two weeks worth of groceries are heavy.