Renault subsidiary Mobilize announced on Tuesday that it was terminating its Zity self-service car rental service in Paris due to “constant damage” caused to its fleet. Arriving in Paris in May 2020, Zity offered its customers the opportunity to rent electric cars (Renault Zoé then Dacia Spring) for several minutes or hours, picking it up then returning it to any public parking space. But despite 100,000 registered customers, the service has failed to become profitable. “The significant and repeated damage (to) our vehicles in Paris very often made them unavailable and generated maintenance costs that became unmanageable,” a Mobilize manager told AFP.
Zity will no longer be available from Monday January 15 in the capital and the few towns in the western suburbs it served (Boulogne, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Vanves), the company said in an email sent Tuesday to his clients. The latter will be able to either request a reimbursement of their remaining credit, or use it in Madrid, where the service became profitable in 2022, or in Lyon and Milan, where it launched in 2022. The platform had a total of nearly 2000 vehicles by the end of 2022.
Also read: Damage, theft, squatting… These French people who hesitate to put their accommodation on Airbnb during the Olympics
“In other cities, things are going very well,” assures the same manager. “There is damage, but not at the level of Paris.” The vehicles that made up the Zity fleet in Paris will be redeployed in these cities or to other car-sharing services of the subsidiary. The abandonment of Mobilize in Paris echoes the discontinuation in 2018 of the Bolloré group’s Autolib’ car-sharing solution, due to lack of profitability and against a backdrop of conflict with Paris and partner suburban municipalities. Several self-service bicycle services have also explained their withdrawal from the streets of Paris by the incivility committed on their machines.
All that remains in the capital is one “free-floating” car-sharing service (with vehicles not attached to a station): that of the Stellantis group, Free2Move, with its electric Peugeot 208 and Fiat 500. Other operators such as Ubeeqo, a subsidiary of Europcar, but also the giant Getaround or Communauto, also offer short-term rental vehicles, but at specific stations. Mobilize became the 100% owner of Zity at the end of 2023, buying 50% of the company’s shares from the Spanish group Ferrovial.
