The diffusion of electric vehicles represents one of the possible strategies in order to reduce air pollution caused by road traffic in urban areas, but the purchasing cost of an electric car is still considered too high, especially taking into account their performances, and therefore such vehicles result to be not competitive. Alternatively, an urban transport policy based on the rent of electric cars could be addressed. This solution has been adopted by several cities and analysing the different initiatives we can identify two kinds of rent: one granting to a single user an electric car for a period of one or more months, and the other one based on the creation of multimodal parkings reachable on foot or by a public transport service where the occasional users can rent a car for some hours. This allows the entrance in areas where no private traffic is normally admitted, such as historic centres. This paper describes the experimental electric car rent started in some Italian and foreign cities. In particular, the analysis of the service started in Turin is useful to investigate the feasibility of introducing a similar facility in other cities.
