Toyota has launched a pilot program for its new i-Road car-sharing system

Strange-looking, miniscule smartcars are nothing new, there are plenty of them on the road, especially in cities that are older or more crowded, where there is much less space to move around. However, Toyota has launched something that actually makes good use of its small, three-wheeled i-Road vehicles: a new car-sharing services that is integrates with the public transit systems that are already in place within a city.

The concept is basically the same as most bike-sharing systems, except that it uses small, zippy vehicles instead of bicycles. The system is meant to supplement existing public transit systems in a city, not replace or compete with them. You can reserve a nearby car from an app on your smartphone, but you can drop it off at certain locations across the city, you don’t have to bring it back to where you found it. The kiosks that the vehicles are parked at also act as charging stations for them so that they always remain charged.

The system was tested in Tokyo earlier this year, and shortly after that a pilot program named Cité lib, in partnership with Japan-based car-sharing company Ha:Mo, was rolled out in  the French city of Grenoble where residents can rent one of 70 cars from 29 stations.

The small electric vehicles don’t just make more sense, logistically speaking, than large gas-guzzling vehicles that dominate most roads, they also make car-sharing much more convenient. They’re especially well-suited for getting places that are too close to drive to in a regular car, but too far to walk to. They also save you the trouble of looking for parking as you can just bring them to one their nearby designated kiosks.

Read more about the story at Auto Evolution.