Electric Car Sharing in France Will Make You Never Want to Take the Bus Again

Public transport just stepped up a notch in France. Are you done with hair-pullingly long off-course commutes, but don't have the sweet funds for a ride of your own? The French city of Grenoble has found the perfect middle ground between two evils — electric, tiny, publicly-owned car sharing.

Driven by Toyota's brand new, three-wheeled, Tron-like i-ROAD electric vehicle, the French city is trialling a new car sharing program called Smart City; designed to bring public and private transport together in one big planet-saving exercise. The City of Grenoble has teamed up with Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, EDF Group, Toyota and Citélib to put these ultra-compact, sustainable automobiles on the road amongst its current car sharing program.

Basically, Grenoblians (yeah? Maybe Grenoblites?) pick up the Toyota EVs at one station and drop it off at another, kind of like NYC's Citi Bike or London's Barclays for cars. The tiny, tiny electric cars take up less space than those terrible, terrible pollution-happy 4WDs, so parking and traffic congestion loosen up while air quality increases.

Two people can sit in tandem, if you're feeling like giving the Goose to your Maverick a lift. Even if you already own a car, the initiative is meant to get commuters to switch vehicles for the last leg of the journey into the CBD problem zone. Nice one, Grenobliers.

The Toyota i-ROAD cars will zoom around Grenoble within the car sharing program for the next three years. Plans to bring the cars to Japan are underway, but no talks for programs in Australia or New Zealand have been had yet.

And although these gloriously '90s-looking colour ranges...

...are slightly too similar to this...

...we're all for investing in sustainability, saving the planet one multicoloured faddish gizmo at a time.

Via Inhabitat.