First came self-service bicycles, and now Paris is launching a greenscheme to provide electric cars that drivers can pick up and drop offanywhere in the city.

The Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë,announced yesterday that from the end of next year, 4,000 electric carswill be placed around Paris and its outskirts for drivers in the schemeto help themselves for short journeys. It is the first electric carproject of its kind in a capital city.

"This couldrevolutionise transport," Delanoë told French radio. He has doubled theprojected cars from 2,000 to 4,000 and expanded the target area beyondParis`s ring road.

In less than a year, Paris`s army of cheap,on-street hire-bicycles called Vélib` has transformed transport habitsand bike awareness. The fleet of carbon-neutral hire-cars calledAutolib is the mayor`s next phase in green transport.

Paris cityhall said 700 Autolib pick-up points would be set up across the Parisarea, 200 of which will be underground. A driver could pick up a car,for example, in the east of the city and drop it off in the west aftera short journey.

"There will be a computerised system whichallows you as soon as you collect the car to announce where you`ll dropit off, so there will be a parking space available," Delanoë said.

Itwould operate similar to the Vélib` bike scheme. Users would eithertake out an annual subscription or be able to approach a hire-point onthe spur of the moment or perhaps pay by using their public transportpass, equivalent to London`s Oyster card. Electric car-rechargingpoints would be scattered across the city.

One target group isyoung couples with children who occasionally need a car to shop ortravel but cannot afford to run their own. The mayor described it as "asystem of individual journeys that are completely clean".

Theproject will go out to tender in coming weeks and the choice of modelfor the electric cars has not been made. Tariffs have not been set, butearlier this year one newspaper quoted a consultation documentsuggesting €200-€250 {£157-£196} a month to drive up to 60 miles.Socialists argued that this was a huge saving on buying and runningyour own car.

But Green party councillors in Paris warned thatencouraging the public to use any type of car instead of givingincentives to stick to bikes and public transport was a bad move.

"I`mvery sceptical," said Denis Baupin, a Green party deputy mayor. "Ifthis scheme encourages people to pick up these cars every day, usingthem to go into work and back instead of using bikes or the metro,crowding roads and changing habits, that`s a problem. I think we wouldbe better off promoting car-sharing schemes like the ones in Britainthat work for occasional use. Whenever electric car schemes have beentested in French towns, it has been a failure."