“Witkar” ( formerly known as “ The White Car”) is a short-term rental project for electric vehicles in Amsterdam .
The author of the project is the inventor and politician Lud Schimmelpennik , who proposed it as a way to improve the environmental situation in Amsterdam. A cooperative society was created to implement the project, which attracted loans to finance it.
Special double small electric cars were developed, which were to be placed at five rental stations in the city center. The system was controlled by a PDP-11 computer and provided for automatic payment of rental from customer accounts in an Amsterdam savings bank.
The system began to work in March 1974, it involved 35 electric vehicles. It was planned to increase the number of electric vehicles and rental stations, but this was not implemented and in 1986 the project was decided to be abandoned for financial reasons.