Experiments for industrial exploration: testing a car sharing system
Résumé
In June 2012, Renault turned Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, a town on the outskirts of Paris, into
a experimentation and demonstration laboratory. The company introduced a fleet of 50
electric cars as part of a car sharing system without fixed stations called Twizy Way. This
scheme falls in line with the manufacturer's development strategy for the electric car market.
According to one of the main project managers, this program is a “first step into new
mobilities”. In this paper will try and present what we consider a quite poorly documented
aspect of the STS debate on experimenting and related to boundary work for the experiment.
We will therefore take into account the ontological work the experiment will produce as well
as its demonstrative ability and the way it intertwines knowledge, as part of this boundary
drawing within the framework of the experiment itself. We do not aim at challenging the
countless works focusing on the performative effects of experiments, we rather reflect on the
fact that its limits are often taken for granted and analyse moments of doubt and negotiation
concerning what is considered experimental or not. We do not plan on using definition for any
social, technical, economic, ecological, urban or political element involved in the experiment
and will consider them, on the contrary, as the temporary and negotiated result of this very
operation of laboratorisation. That is why we will speak of a form of flexible laboratorisation
affected by doubt and constant reorganisation of the elements making up, overflowing and
interfering with the experiment.
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