Autocar - First for car news and reviews

Daimler and Smart are launching a scheme designed to provide a solution to inner-city traffic congestion and pollution.
‘Car2go’ centres on a pool of Smart Fortwo cars, which will be available for hire to any eligible members of public at any time.
The pilot scheme begins on 24 October and involves 50 cars available to Daimler’s 500 staff in Ulm, near Stuttgart. Analysis of t...Read the full article

They have a similar system in place in Paris, but with bikes. Every 300 yards or so, about 20 (weird looking) bikes are positioned in a bike rank, and the person pops €1 into the machine, parking it up and clicking it into place at another rank near to their destination somewhere else in the city. I reckon it's a good idea, and could do well in the UK were parking is often expensive.

Such a system has been proposed for Bristol. I'm not sure how they're going to deal with the hills though.

The bike schemes are usually funded by advertising, JCDecaux got an absolute bargain with the Velib scheme - access to a huge number of on-street advert spaces for a fraction of the normal cost. I have read a suggestion somewhere that the energy consumed by their illuminated adverts renders the environmental benefits of the scheme null and void, but I'd check that out before quoting it as fact...