Liberté. égalité. fraternité. mobilité?
The Paris 2024 Olympics just concluded and whatever you think of actual games (they were great!) the city itself deserves a lot of credit for giving its visitors a first class experience. Here at Electrek, we’ll focus on the transportation aspect…
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In a perfectly Parisian solution to the expected influx of tourists for the Olympic games, and the resulting traffic, city officials have been hard at work. And the answer has proven to be getting half of those wheels off the road.
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The ‘One simple trick’ trope has long become a running joke among journalists, usually signifying the beginning of a scam. But every once in a while, it’s exactly right. Such is the case with how Paris was able to transform its air quality and thus the quality of life in the city in the run-up to the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics.
So what was the trick? Kicking out cars.
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Global open-top tour bus operator Big Bus Tours has added 40 electric sightseeing buses to its fleet in time for the summer holiday season.
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Parisians have voted to triple the parking costs for SUVs – including heavier electric ones and hybrids. This Sunday, the city held a referendum, with Parisians voting 56.6% in favor of increased parking fees for SUVs and heavy sedans, of all varieties.
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Paris raised eyebrows earlier this year when the city voted to ban shared electric scooters. While privately owned electric scooters were still allowed, the thousands of shared electric scooters that were commonly used by locals and tourists were forced to vacate the city, with unexpected results.
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The planned global introduction of air taxi services next year during the Paris Summer Olympics already risks being grounded after city authorities from across party lines joined up this week to lavishly dump on what elsewhere in France and the world has been the tech’s much-ballyhooed debut.
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For years, shared electric scooters have dotted the streets and sidewalks of Paris. The scooters were heavily regulated but still welcomed into the city as a new form of alternative transportation. Over time though, the issue of shared e-scooters became more divisive, especially as the number of e-scooters in the city grew. Now it looks like the city is ready to write the final chapter on the shared two-wheelers after a recent vote has led the French capital to ban rental e-scooters.
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In a bid to clean up the city and reduce the chokehold of traffic congestion, Paris plans to ban cars from much of the historic part of the French capital.
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Paris’ public transport operator announced it has ordered up to 800 new electric buses for the capital city, replacing older diesel buses in the process.
With all the planned bans on petrol and diesel cars announced lately, we are starting to witness different levels of government and jurisdictions outdoing themselves. For example, Scotland announced a phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars by 2032 while the UK is aiming for 2040.
Now Paris announces that it is only going to allow electric cars as soon as 2030 ahead of France’s 2040 goal.
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Paris, the city that pioneered the huge bike share Vélib’ system a decade ago and more recently began offering Small electric cars to rent via its Autolib’ program looks like it will begin offering an in-between electric scooter renting program operated by Cityscoot company. The company is said to offer 1000 of the quiet mopeds around Paris available to anyone over 20 with a moped license…
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With the Paris climate talks taking place this week, I thought it fitting to share an idea I came up with a few years ago while visiting the French capital. ‘Moulin Eiffel’ is taking the 130-year old Eiffel Tower, the iconic symbol of Paris, and outfitting it with a vertical axis wind turbine. The idea is that the tower seen around the whole world would genuinely (not BS) become energy neutral and a symbol for a sustainable energy future.
I had originally considered the option of placing a traditional “windmill” on top of the tower like you increasingly see in farms around the world, but with all of the equipment located up there already plus factoring changing wind patterns and the all important aesthetics, the vertical model works the best. This is how:
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On the margins of the UN conference on climate change in Paris, Elon Musk was at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University yesterday for a talk about what can be done to curb CO2 emissions, which he followed with a Q&A with students.
The main point Musk was trying to make during the talk was that the fundamental problem with carbon emission is that companies are currently incentivized to use fossil fuels rather than sustainable energy. He argued that to end the incentives, you need to attach a price to carbon emissions, and the best way to that is to introduce a carbon tax.
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A group of activists called “Brandalism” installed hundreds of “fake ads” in Paris to protest against corporate greenwashing. The action is taking place during the climate talks in the French capital, which are being held at an airport and sponsored by an airline as well as energy companies, car manufacturers and banks.
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Sky News staged a race between Nissan’s battery-powered LEAF and Hyundai’s hydrogen fuel cell ix35 SUV. The race started at Sky’s studios in London and the finish line was in Paris for the COP21 Conference. Spoiler alert: the ix35 won.
The 270-mile journey was well within the 369-mile range of the ix35, but with the LEAF’s 84-mile range, it needed to stop to charge its 24 kWh battery pack.
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