 |
New partnership |
||
 |
|||
IN THE MEDIA Le Soleil, Québec, Vision durable, Montréal, Last updated |
|||
Self-service electric vehicles Quebec City, May 22, 2008
The agreement was signed under the auspices of France’s mobility and advanced transportation competitiveness cluster and Quebec’s advanced land transportation niche of excellence (CEVEQ/CNDTTA) at the Symposium on Quebec’s niches of excellence and France’s competitiveness clusters, held in Quebec City and organized by the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade. The collaboration project aims to examine the issues involved in implementing self-service electric vehicle fleets. Many aspects will be looked at, including technical and organizational feasibility, fare policies, service delivery, the interoperability of services in Quebec and France, and most notably, research on promoting the use of these new means of transportation. “This agreement is one stage in our strategy for developing new mobility systems. Our partners can now profit from our know-how on operating a fleet of self-service electric vehicles, and we will be able to share our respective expertise in the field of car sharing,” said Pierre Fedick, CEO of Comox, a subsidiary of Veolia which specializes in timeshare vehicle services. “This partnership is all the more important for us since we have high hopes for the new projects that some major cities will be implementing, such as Autolib’ in Paris.” “Communauto has long been considering adding electric vehicles to our fleet and thereby maximizing the environmental benefits of our service. With this agreement, we can take advantage of some welcome technical assistance and limit the risks involved with this option,” said Mr Benoît Robert, CEO of Communauto. “In return, our partners will be able to profit from the experience we have gained over almost 14 years of operation.” Communauto, a Quebec organization with an urbanistic, social and environmental mission, offers an attractive alternative to owning a car. Established in 1994, it is one of the world’s largest car sharing service providers, and the oldest in North America. It currently has 15,000 subscribers who share 750 vehicles located in 250 parking stations in Montreal, Quebec, Gatineau and Sherbrooke. www.communauto.com Comox, a subsidiary of Veolia Transport, is a car sharing service provider (Narbonne) which also has an active presence in the self-service electric vehicle sector (La Rochelle, France). www.comox.fr The Transport division of Veolia Environment operates in 27 countries, employing 81,897 collaborators. Veolia Transport’s sales in 2007 reached 5.5 billion euros. It transports 2.5 billion travellers each year using 30,800 road vehicles and rail cars. www.veolia-transport.com Veolia Environnement (Euronext Paris: VIE and NYSE: VE) is the world’s leading provider of environmental services. Active on all five continents with over 300,000 employees, the group provides customized solutions to organizations and corporations for four complementary activities: water management, waste management, energy management, and management of freight and passenger transport. Veolia Environnement’s sales totalled 32.6 billion euros in 2007. www.veolia.com Marco Viviani |
|||
