French billionaire Vincent Bollore unveils electric car version of 'Boris bike'

But Mr Bollore, whose company has interests in transport, media and electricity storage, said the yet-to-be named car hire scheme would be serviced by 6,000 charging points installed around London by 2018, up from the current 1,400.

Users will be able to hire a car for £10 an hour, using a smartphone app to find a pick-up point, then leave it at one of an unspecified number of locations.

Already established car share schemes such as Avis unit Zipcar, Hertz and independently-owned City Car Club only allow drivers to collect and leave vehicles at the same spot. They also use mostly conventionally-powered vehicles.

Mr Bollore said drivers would be issued with a card that acted as a key and recognised them, even remembering their favourite radio station. He said 100 vehicles would be parked around London in the next year, with the rest to follow by 2016.

The Bollore group, which also operates car clubs in the French cities Lyon and Bordeaux, said it was investing £100m on the UK initiative, with some £60m to be spent a year on maintaining vehicles and running the business.

In Paris, the car share scheme has about 12,000 rentals a day with more than 4,800 charge points. It expects to break even ahead of its expected target in November this year.

Mr Bollore said he was planning to open his company's first US scheme in Indianapolis, Indiana, this year with 500 cars and 1,000 charge points.

A lawyer by training and previously an investment banker, Mr Bollore, 61, has become rich by taking stakes in troubled companies, building an investment conglomerate from the family's paper mills in Brittany.

Some Londoners, however, were less than impressed.

"There's so much traffic around that I think I'd spend the whole 20 minutes or so stood in traffic, so I don't see the point of it," marketing assistant Lucy Pearce said.

Insurance broker Martin Parfitt said he'd rather stick with a cramped train on the Underground. "The roads are snarled up and I think it will jut create more pollution in the city."

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