The Renault subsidiary Mobilize announced this Tuesday, January 9, that it was ending its Zity self-service car rental service in Paris due to the “constant damage” caused to its fleet.
Arriving in Paris in May 2020, Zity offered its customers the possibility of renting electric cars (Renault Zoé and then Dacia Spring) for several minutes or hours, picking them up and returning them to any public parking lot.
“Significant and repeated damage” to vehicles
But, despite having 100,000 registered customers, the service has not been profitable.
“The significant and repeated damage suffered by our vehicles in Paris often made them unusable and generated maintenance costs that became unmanageable,” a Mobilize official told AFP.
Zity will no longer be available starting Monday, January 15, in the capital and the few cities in the western suburbs it serves (Boulogne, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Vanves), the company said in an email sent on Tuesday to their clients.
Service still active in Madrid, Lyon and Milan
The latter will be able to request a refund of the remaining credit or use it in Madrid, where the service became profitable in 2022, or in Lyon and Milan, where it was launched in 2022. The platform had a total of almost 2,000 vehicles. by the end of 2022.
“In other cities things are going very well,” says the same manager. “There is damage, but not to the level of Paris.”
The vehicles that made up Zity’s fleet in Paris will be redistributed in these cities or in other carsharing services of the subsidiary.
Free2Move, the only free player in Paris
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 in a context of conflict with Paris and associated suburban municipalities.
Several self-service bicycle services have also explained their withdrawal from the streets of Paris due to the lack of civility committed with their machines.
In the capital there is only one “floating” car rental service (with vehicles not connected 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 100% owner of Zity at the end of 2023, purchasing 50% of the company’s shares from the Spanish group Ferrovial.
Source: BFM TV
