Warsaw and Paris to see mobility service expansion

13 March 2019

The Polish branch of charging network provider Innogy is to launch an electric car-sharing scheme in Warsaw.

The company will deploy 500 BMW i3 electric vehicles (EVs) in April this year and Innogy will also commit to expanding its charging infrastructure in the city as a result. While Warsaw hosts some car-sharing schemes, this will be the first to offer a full-electric line-up.

Innogy already operates more than 30 charging points in the Polish capital and 30 supercharging points, dedicated to the Innogy eCarSharing service, will be added at the beginning of April. In cooperation with an international bank and close collaboration with Warsaw City Council and other partners, several hundred additional public charging points are expected to be built over the next two years.

′Within our pilot project, we have been successfully testing eCarSharing with employees and customers,’ said Innogy CEO Filip Thon. ′Now we want to get citizens in Warsaw interested in and on board with this future-oriented form of mobility.’

The offering is primarily aimed at citizens who are interested in innovation and to whom the issue of sustainability is important – these could be private customers but also corporate customers and tourists, the company says.

′As a pioneer of e-mobility, Innogy is promoting it on an international scale. We are developing new business models for our company, which also greatly benefit citizens and customers. This ground-breaking project will turn environmentally friendly e-mobility into something that everyone can enjoy,’ adds Martin Herrmann, COO of Retail at Innogy SE.

PSA expansion

Meanwhile, PSA Group’s Free2Move car-sharing scheme is to expand its operations in Paris, making its free-floating cars available to users in the inner-city suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux. It also plans to open up the service for customers at suburban Paris shopping areas.

The service launched in December last year, following the collapse of previous provider Autolib. It is taking advantage of calls for the banning of diesel vehicles in the city, together with rules regarding payment for parking spaces, which has freed up new locations for the service.

Users can park for free in authorised parking spaces and designated electric vehicle spaces. There are 1,700 such spaces in Paris and 125 in Issy-les-Moulineaux. The fleet of more than 500 Peugeot i0n and Citroën C-Zero electric vehicles is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The cars are regularly cleaned and charged by dedicated teams.

André Santini, Mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux, commented: ′The mobility challenge is at the top of everyone’s mind these days. As a smart, innovative city at the heart of Greater Paris, Issy″‘les-Moulineaux is proud to be the first inner Paris suburb to offer Free2Move Paris to its residents. A genuine laboratory for trying out new ideas, our city is pioneering fresh modes of transport and ways of using vehicles so that we can shape the city of the future, particularly through the So Mobility consortium, whose aim is to collectively develop concrete, sustainable solutions for getting around the city’.