Mitsui & Co. of Japan has a service called Car Sharing Japan Co. From this spring the service will introduce electric vehicles. What an idea! What better than sharing a car? How about sharing an electric car?

Members share the use of vehicles.

The service is called careco and will be launched this Thursday. There will be nine bases in and around Tokyo’s Shibuya. (Why anybody would want to drive a car in Tokyo is beyond me, considering the availability of the public transportation.) Anyway, the fleet will be made up of the Prius hybrid, the iQ ultracompact, and the Vitz subcompact, all of which are made by Toyota Motor Corp. Also in the fleet will be Honda Motor Co.’s Fit subcompact. The lineup will gradually grow, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.’s wants its Plug-In Stella vehicle included by spring.

There are four levels of fees that are managed by a broker. Members will be able to reserve cars and unlock vehicles.

Bertrand Delanoe, the actual Paris mayor said that if re-elected he will build the “Autolib” which is a self-service electric and/or hybrid-electric car system, that will include 300 free re-charging stations in different parts of the city and 2,000 cars (electric and hybrid). This car-sharing system may be a solution that would reduce car congestion and may solve some of the parking issues in the city, but Parisian taxi drivers don’t see it in pink.

Norwegian company THINK, is considering a bid on the project with their “City” and “Ox” models, the modern urban car that have zero local emissions, that can travel up to 200 kilometers on a fully charged battery and reaches 100 km/h.

Just for that project and Bertrand Delanoe will probably get a lot of votes, but from saying to making it the real thing, there’s a long way.

via Wikio