The City of Paris, together with surrounding “communes”, created a public authority to investigate the possibility to launch by 2011 of a new transport system: Autolib’. The project is related to the highly successful Velib’ project that was launched in Paris a few years ago. Autolib’ is essentially a system of 4000 “shared” electric cars that can be used for one-way trips of limited distance between 1400 parking points within central Paris and the surrounding regions. Details of the fare system are still being studied, but it is envisioned that the user would pay a subscription fee and a variable cost depending on the duration of use. And importantly: there would be a guaranteed parking space at the destination of the trip.

Avis, RATP, SNCF and VINCI Park formed a consortium to bid for the operation of the Autolib’ system. They have commissioned research to estimate the potential demand and revenue for the new Autolib’ service with the highest possible accuracy. This to help them to shape the service in the best possible way, to determine the financial conditions and the economic basis of the project, and also to generate the information and argumentation necessary to maximise the reliability of the system.

In the paper we shall briefly introduce the proposed new system, and report the stated choice research that was carried out to estimate the potential demand. The following three experiments were conducted: 

• One stated intentions exercise to measure preferences for different subscription possibilities;
• One stated choice experiment to assess the propensity to buy a subscription;
• One stated choice experiment investigating mode choice among three alternatives: chosen mode, best alternative mode, newly proposed mode.

In the paper we will describe the chosen methodology, the way in which the results of the three experiments have been integrated, and the lessons that can be learnt for estimating potential demand for new transport modes using stated choice experiments.