San Diego is launching North America's first large-scale all-electric car sharing fleet with itty-bitty EVs people can grab quickly, easily and spontaneously.

Daimler subsidiary car2go will roll out 300 Smart ForTwo Electric Drives by the end of the year. Subscribers will simply grab a car from designated spots around the city. That's a contrast to Zipcar, which requires users to pick up and return vehicles from the same location. The goal, says car2go, is to make car sharing easier, faster and more practical.

“The launch of an all-electric vehicle fleet marks a new era in car sharing in North America,” said Nicholas Cole, president and CEO of car2go. "Our goal is to complement the existing transportation infrastructure by providing an emission-free car sharing service for short and spontaneous one-way trips.”

We've seen this before, albeit on a much smaller scale. Two years ago, Baltimore rolled out a small fleet of neighborhood electric vehicles people could use in the Inner Harbor district. And ZipCar added eight Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrids to its fleets in three cities earlier this year.

But San Diego is placing the biggest bet on the idea. It is a riff on the car2go car sharing program Daimler launched in Ulm, Germany, three years ago. Daimler expanded the program to Austin, Texas; Hamburg, Germany; and Vancouver, British Columbia in 2009. Car2go has more than 40,000 members who share 1,000 conventional Smart ForTwo coupes.

Electric vehicles make sense for an urban car sharing program. Although the Smart Electric Drive is maddeningly slow and less practical than, say, the Nissan Leaf, it is suited to city driving. It's small but roomy and a snap to park. It's got a range of 84 miles, plenty for life in the city because Car2go says its drivers rarely go more than six miles. And while the Smart ED isn't the best ambassador for the technology, getting more cars with cords on the road can only help push them further into the mainstream.

San Diego is working with Ecotality to install 1,000 public charging stations and plans to have them online by year's end.

No word on when people can sign up for the service or what they'll pay, but the car2go program in Austin charges a one-time registration fee of $35 and 35 cents minute for the cars, up to $12.99 an hour or $65.99 a day.

Car2go says the cars will feature "the latest car2go telematics technology," which will allow "fully automated, easy and convenient" rentals.

Photo: A Smart ForTwo Electric Drive at Windansea Beach in La Jolla. Daimler