French Ecological Transition Minister, Barbara Pompili, announced the new premium saying the government wants to facilitate the acquisition of an electric car and at the same time the use of it by deploying more chargers /AFP
The French government is gearing up its support for EV sales by offering a premium of 1 000 euros for second-hand electric cars, without income limits as of 2021. So far, only new EVs are eligible for a premium of up to 7 000 euros. That premium is lowered to €6 000 at the same time. The latter was announced this week by the French Minister for Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili.
A system of ‘microcredits’ with state guarantee must enable people with a lower income to access electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the scrap premium up to €5 000 for turning in a polluting old car to be replaced by a ‘clean’ younger one is maintained.
No more diesel cars
Replacing it with a diesel car won’t be possible anymore, and apart from BEVs and plug-in hybrids, only gasoline cars with Crit’Air 1 label (younger than 2011) will be eligible. New is that retrofitting an ICE car with electric propulsion is allowed too. This ‘conversion premium’ as the scrap premium is called, is bound to income limits, though.
The government has put aside “€2 billion for cleaner cars”, embedded into the €100 billion economic stimulus plan, and the effect is clearly visible in France as electric car sales are booming.
Since the beginning of this year, and despite the corona crisis, some 70 000 electric vehicles are sold in France, compared to 30 000 the year before. An increase of 132%. On top of that, 40 284 plug-in hybrids (PHEV) were sold, increasing by 239%.
100 000 charging points by 2021
To guarantee that these electric cars will get charged in time and push back the general public’s ‘range anxiety’, the French Minister of Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, wants to deploy 100 000 charging points throughout France by the end of 2021.
Djebbari wants more chargers and ‘with better quality’ over the whole French territory and on the major ‘corridors’ toward Germany and the Benelux. To accomplish that, a charter ‘Objectif 100 000 bornes’ was signed by several major retailers like Leclerc, Lidl, Casino, or Système U, and energy providers Total and Engie.
The goal is to have charging points installed at most parking lots of those retailers and along all French highways. For this, the private companies managing most of the French highways have engaged themselves too.
Gaz-guzzler tax of €50 000
On the other side of the spectrum, the French government is preparing to raise the ‘malus’ or penalty tax on (super)cars and trucks emitting lots of CO2 to €40 000 from 2021 on and €50 000 in 2022. France already is within Europe one of the countries taxing cars most based on CO2-emissions, up to €20 000.
According to the Bloomberg news agency, the proposal of law targets cars emitting more than 225 grams of CO2 per km. That would apply, among others, for the Lamborghini Urus and Aventador, a Ferrari Portofino or 812, the Porsche 718 Spyder and 911, the Rolls-Royce’s Ghost and Cullinan, Bentley’s Flying Spur, and the Mercedes AMG and G-Class cars.
But the results of such a penalty remains to be seen, as people buying those kinds of cars generally aren’t pushed for ‘small’ money like 50 000 euros.
