April 3, 2017

BlueSolution to California

Parastoo Jabbari

Los Angeles is going to add a new one way car-sharing program, BlueSolution, to the city. So far, the City of Los Angeles only hosts Zipcar in some parts of the city, which does not seem to meet the city’s needs and goals toward mobility for all. A major distinction between the new BlueSolution program and many other carshare systems is that all the vehicles in this fleet are going be electric.

Previously in 2015, the same company launched their carsharing program called Blueindy in Indianapolis with 100 cars and with the goal of 500 cars and 200 charging stations. Nine months after the program launch, Blueindy had 2,100 registered members.

Figure 1. BlueIndy car.

BlueSolutions designs batteries, vehicles, charging stations, and information systems in collaboration with partners such as Pininfarina and recently Renault. The vehicles use Lithium-Metal-Polymer Batteries (LMP). BlueSolution claims that these batteries are produced through a cleaner process, because they do not contain solvents they are more environmental friendly, and easier to recycle. The vehicle is a light (around 2200 lbs) 4-seater with a range of around 250 miles.

It is hoped that BlueSolution will help Los Angeles County to achieve its goals of equitable mobility for all and emission reduction.  The chosen service communities are in the “top 10 percent of those identified by the state as having the lowest incomes and being the most vulnerable to pollution from traffic or industrial sources.” Based on Sustainable City pLAn, the Mayor of LA’s Sustainability Office “has secured $1.6 million grant, leveraged by an estimated additional $8 million in City resources and private investments” to provide this service for those communities. The goal is to deploy “a 100-vehicle pilot fleet” and install 200 charging stations. Officials are aiming to recruit 7000 members on the way to a goal of “2 percent vehicle reduction” which means eliminating 100,000 vehicles from county’s roads over the next of 5 years. It is expected that the pilot program will “help avoid purchase of 1,000 private internal combustion engine vehicles, reducing an estimated 2,150 tons of CO₂ annually as well as air pollutant emissions.”

According to the EPA, the CO₂ emissions from a gallon of gasoline is 8,887 grams, and based on Department of Energy numbers each car consumed an average of 480 gallons per year in 2010. Therefore, each car produces around 4300 kg of CO₂ per year. This is considerably more than the estimate of 2.15 tons per vehicle noted above. This difference may be due to continuing fuel economy improvements over time, which mean that future cars may produce less CO₂ than did the fleet in 2010. However, there is no precise way to predict how many people would avoid purchasing a car or giving up a car because of carsharing program, or the precise size and type of car that they would give up.

Figure 2. A streetside kiosk for the BlueIndy. http://www.autonews.com/article/20150928/OEM05/309289981/indianapolis-car-sharing-service-is-generating-controversy

Substantial research (Cervero and Tsai, 2004, Martin and Shaheen, 2011, Clewlow, 2016) supports the conclusion that carsharing programs can lead to better mobility for community members and encourage people to give up  ownership of personal vehicles. However, the popularity of a program in a region depends on demographics such as the age, education, and income level, personal characteristics (how concerned they are about the environment), and type of the urban area the service is provided. Most of the papers have shown that carsharing members tend to be more educated and have higher incomes. Now that this program is targeting less fortunate communities, it is important to carefully choose membership fees, locations of the stations for both origins and destinations (where people work), incentives that are provided for users, and to manage how the program complement public transit.

(Blue Solution is one of the umbrella companies of the Bollore Group. Bollore Group, with headquarters in France, works on storing and smart managing of electricity and uses its innovations and through Blue Solution and Blue Applications.)