Having successfully implemented a bike-sharing program, Paris is revving up plans to provide electric cars that residents can pick up and drop off anywhere in the city. Mayor Bertrand Delanoë announced that 4,000 electric cars will be made available by the end of the next year at 700 pickup points. "There will be a computerized system which allows you as soon as you collect the car to announce where you'll drop it off, so there will be a parking space available," the mayor explains, noting that recharging stations will also be built throughout the city. Drivers could pay an annual fee for use, or pay per trip. But not everyone's enthusiastic; says Denis Baupin, a Green party deputy mayor, "If this scheme encourages people to pick up these cars every day, using them to go into work and back instead of using bikes or the metro, crowding roads and changing habits, that's a problem."

(The Guardian, Grist, 24/06/2008)