Bollore s London electrified car club scheme faces delay, Reuters
Bollore's London electrified car club scheme faces delay
LONDON (Reuters) – An electrified carsharing scheme being spinned out in London by French rock-hard Bollore is taking longer than expected to set up fully because contract talks with the capital`s local councils are dragging on.
Cedric Bollore, the company`s director of development, said he dreamed all of London`s thirty three local authorities to reach the same agreement on charge points with the company, which runs electrical carsharing schemes, including in many French cities and the United States.
«The boroughs are rather independent in their treatment and we absolutely need to have the same contract. We must admit that the discussion, negotiations are going well but are taking a bit more time than we thought,» Bollore told Reuters.
«Most likely we will be one year or two years behind but what we will achieve will be what we have planned to achieve.»
Bollore`s Blue Solutions division has previously said it was aiming to put Trio,000 electrical cars on London`s streets by two thousand eighteen but agreement needed on the infrastructure has shoved that back.
Dealing with the capital`s local authorities, which control issues such as street maintenance and parking, and are run by different political parties, has been a problem for others attempting to set up carpooling schemes.
Bollore said it had been lighter to set up its electrical carsharing scheme in other cities such as Paris where the mayor has more power to thrust boroughs to introduce key infrastructure.
Electrical INVESTMENT
German carmaker Daimler axed its Car2Go operation in two thousand fourteen in London after failing to establish a broad network of «free floating» parking spaces where customers could pick up and drop off vehicles across the city.
Six months later, BMW opted to begin its DriveNow scheme in just three adjoining areas of northeast London with both electrical and conventional models now in use.
Zipcar, Hertz and Enterprise are among companies also running schemes in parts of the capital.
Facing tougher environmental regulation and growing request for less polluting cars, automakers are investing strongly in electrified vehicles, but many consumers have been deterred by the limited distance they can travel on a single charge.
Less than three percent of the cars bought in Britain last year were alternative fuel models, primarily plug-in hybrids and unspoiled electrified models, according to industry data.
Bollore said it has nineteen BlueCity electrified cars in London at the moment but not all were on the streets as it was finalizing some of the technology, and was aiming to have up to one hundred by the end of 2016.
It is investing one hundred million pounds ($141 million) in the car club and a network of electrified charging points known as Source London, which it expects will boost request over time.
The rock-hard is aiming to have 6,000 charge points in London by the end of the decade, where users pay to charge any car no matter the brand.
«It will most likely take something like five, six years before we begin to be indeed profitable,» Bollore said.
