The car that conquered France

As urban planners increasingly look to go carless, they may want to cast their eyes to Paris, where the Bluecar has captured the auto-sharing market. Bolloré began deploying the Bluecar in 2011 as part of the popular Autolib program and now maintains a fleet of more than 2,000 of the all-electric dynamos. The three-door hatchback has a range of 160 miles in the city. One secret of its success is a Lithium Metal Polymer battery located under the passenger seat. “LMP battery technology provides up to four times the energy density of lead-acid batteries commonly used in the automotive industry,” explains Abel Ebongue, a technical service specialist at 3M France. Little wonder the $25,000 Bluecar was France’s top-selling highway-capable electric car in 2012. And it’s not just Europe that’s going green – the next stop for the car-sharing program is Indianapolis.