BMW and San Francisco to launch 'green' initiatives

The Mayor of San Francisco, Edwin M Lee, will inaugurate a unique, premium car-sharing service, which features a fleet of 70 BMW ActiveE all-electric vehicles, at an event on Monday, August 20 at the city’s Civic Center Plaza. He will be joined by Dr Ian Robertson, a member of BMW’s management board, who will announce the USA launch the company’s innovative, new mobile parking system. During the press conference, Lee will launch the new BMW system by becoming the first person to reserve a parking space with the new mobile parking service. Both initiatives are expected to help decrease traffic congestion in downtown San Francisco, while reducing emissions.

The BMW ActiveE that will be used in the car-sharing program is an all-electric version of the company’s 1 Series coupe, which features regenerative braking technology and a five-hour charging time. Finding an available parking location in downtown San Francisco is considered to be a major problem. There are an estimated 505,000 vehicles in the city, but there are only 448,000 parking spaces available. City traffic engineers estimate that approximately one-third of all downtown traffic is caused by cars attempting to find a place to park. A recent UCLA parking survey calculated that drivers searching for curb parking in one city in California drove an extra 950,000 miles (1.53 million km) in a single year, equal to 38 trips around the earth, and wasted approximately 47,000 gallons of fuel.

10 August 2012