But even here it has taken 16 years for the HEV (Toyota Prius) to get to its current levels of sales (about 3m cars a year globally). The explicit terms of the contract are just an outline, as there are implicit terms and understandings which determine the behaviour of the parties. The potential for returns from such new markets have motivated Renault-Nissan to invest more than €4 billion in developing market-ready electric vehicles, and other car-makers have followed this logic in developing electric vehicles as part of their own investment strategy. In a similar vein, the Paris-based network of shared-use station-based electric cars (Autolib) has been fully financed by the Bollore group which specialises in battery technology and vehicle-based IT systems (Case Study 5).