100 000 electric vehicle rentals! Bravo Autolib’
I have always thought that a chance to try out an electric vehicle would be the tipping point for the general public to understand the advantages of these vehicles. Autolib’ has contributed enormously to this phenomenon and is celebrating its one hundred thousandth rental today.
One has to admit that Autolib’ has made a crazy bet. To design and manufacture a 100% electric car, to construct and install hundreds of car-sharing stations in the French capital and to ensure the logistics, maintenance and customer service of this infrastructure requires a touch of craziness and single-minded confidence in the future of electric mobility and car sharing.
So hats off: one hundred thousand rentals in less than 6 months is a great success. For our readers who like numbers, that means 735 rentals per day, on average, or 30 rental per hour since the launch of the service on December 5, 2011. That’s an average, of course. The most impressive statistics are that each week, Autolib users increase by 10%, going from 2500 in the week that the service was launched to over 10 000 for the week of the 9th to the 15th of April 2012
To celebrate this landmark, Autolib’ has shared the details of its one hundred thousandth user, who was offered a year’s membership and a dinner for two in the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower.
” Maximilien Pradines has a notary position and lives in Reuil-Malmaison (in the suburbs of Paris), where he subscribed for a premium membership on March 15, 2012. When he was contacted this morning by the Customer Service team at Autolib’, he said that he uses the Bluecar two or three times per week to go out for dinner in Paris. He and his fiancee own 2 cars, but prefer to use Autolib’ for economical and mostly practical reasons in the city center.”
I don’t know if this is the typical profile of an Autolib’ user, but certainly Autolib’ represents one of the best revolutions in the transportation used to get around Paris. I hope that the concept will stand the economic model test, and can be soon replicated in other cities…
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