"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
08/01/2014 at 21:17 • Filed to: reviews
4
1|
"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
08/01/2014 at 21:17 • Filed to: reviews | 4
| 1 |
Many towns have bike rental schemes. Paris has Velib, London has its Boris Bikes and New York has Citi Bike. All well and good but some of us want something that has a roof, will carry more than one of us and doesn't need to be human powered.
Enter then oh-so-green short term electric car rentals. For your edification I've tried the Auto'lib scheme in Paris.
Registration 8/10
This is the most time consuming part of the process. You need to gather together passport, driving licence and credit card and take yourself off to one of the kiosks which are to be found on the streets. If you know Paris well you'll have come across them, otherwise Google is your friend. Once inside you have a video conference session with someone who either speaks English or will find someone who does, although France being France they'd really much rather you did your parlez-vous ing thing, merci . You then scan your documents as instructed while becoming slightly annoyed by the slight delay in response each time. Then you need to decide what you want. Day, week, month or year. A day has no standing charge, longer terms do and you pay for usage per half hour on top of that. Once you've decided what you need the machine spits out a card and you're off to find a car. A Bolloré Bluecar to be exact, although they're silver. Lots of stations around, often empty or unavailable if you actually need one.
Welcome aboard 9/10
Place your card on a sensor on the car, unplug (at which point the clock starts), get in and you find a key dangling from a plastic cord. Turn the "ignition" on and a screen in the middle of the dash welcomes you by name and proceeds to instruct you on your car.
Initial impressions 6/10
My car felt older and more tired than it should have and some trim had bade adieu to its mountings. Definitely a down market, one careful owner and five hundred careless drivers, kind of experience.
Acceleration 5/10
An electric motor produces its maximum torque at zero revs so I expected a brisk take off. Sadly, that wasn't on the agenda. Put your foot down and you gather speed gently. This isn't something you're going to keeping up with the maxi scooters so beloved of Parisians with.
Driving 6/10
Very easy of course but a couple of peculiarities. The car doesn't creep and the gearlever is backwards. Drive at the front, reverse at the back. This was something I found quite exciting when doing a hurried three point turn in the middle of a busy Paris street. Because I was going the wrong way on a one way. Don't.
Noise 5/10
There's quite a lot of it. Go slowly and the motor goes wheeee. Go faster and it goes WHEEEEEE.
Equipment 7/10
All the basics plus a dedicated sat nav which tells you where the available charging points are and will take you there, in English if you like. Yes, of course I did it in French. I was in France, dammit.
Range and charging 8/10
Range is supposed to be 250km/160 miles in town. I had my car half an hour and the level of charge barely moved. It's not going to be an issue as you're not going to be going far anyway. Indeed. you can't. Drive outside Paris and an operator's disembodied voice will appear and call you back. Ignore her and she'll call les flics.
Costs 6/10
If there are only one or two of you and you're not carrying much, you're better off with bus or metro. Autolib' is really only suitable for more people, more goods and if you know exactly where the stations are in relation to your chosen destination.
E. Julius
> Cé hé sin
03/05/2015 at 14:14 |
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Thanks! Always wondered how this worked.