Famous grey cars of Paris may meet its maker within the next few days, thanks to poor decisions of the company, lack of hygiene and control of the cars and their users.

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More than six years has passed, since Paris got their first electric car sharing scheme, the Autolib. A revolutionary service for that time meant, that France metropolis became one of the first cities in the world. Around 4000 electric cars were provided through this scheme on 1.100 locations. However, it looks like that Autolib is not going to make it until its seventh birthday.

According to French web side, the Local, this service may meet the end within the next few days, thanks to SAVM union responsible for monitoring the public car-sharing scheme, which also entrusted the Blue Solutions to run the project. This would happen much sooner than predicted since the contract between both parties predicted the project to last for at least another five years.

"It can stop as soon as we receive the notification, Thursday or Monday at the latest," said Marie Bollere who runs Blue solutions and its owner, Bollore group. She then also stated, that terminating the contract is absurd and that she has not been informed about SAVM's intentions by the union itself, but rather from French media.

SAVM on the other hand has some legitimate reasons to quit the deal. The main reason is Autolib's loses. Instead making the profit of 56 million euros by the end of 2023, Autolib is supposedly tens of millions of euros in debt. Apart from that, even though car sharing is becoming more popular solution of transport around the world, company has lost some 8 percent of subscribers within the last year alone. One of the main reasons for that could be poor hygiene within the cars with leftovers of food, rubbish, lighters, cigarettes and even drugs.

Terminating the deal would mean a huge impact for Bollere group, and Blue Sollutions as the debt would get much bigger. "We will be closer to 300 million euros of debt than the tens of millions described by the SAVM. I repeat, the decision seems totally absurd,« said Bollere, begging SAVM to instead of terminating the deal, help them find the solution. Currently the debt is 210 million euros. Still Bollere is staying optimistic, saying she will wait until the official termination arrives.

June 26, 2018 Driving photo: Profimedia

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