The French are not only interested in electric cars: they buy them! Since the start of the year, sales have increased sharply even as the overall market for new cars has declined.
Several encouraging news on the front of 100% electric mobility in France. The first is a 50% increase in sales of electric passenger cars over the first 9 months of the year, reaching 30,377 units (source: Avere France). It is still a drop in the bucket in a market of 1.64 million passenger cars all energy combined, but we note that said market will have declined by 1.28% over the period.
Awareness and tax incentives helping, the French are going more and more green, and mostly fall for the Renault Zoé (2470 units sold in July-August and 48% of the market), followed by Nissan Leaf (642 copies) and Tesla Model 3 (518 ex.). There is no doubt that the arrival of the Peugeot e-208 and Opel e-Corsa will make things even more dynamic.
Favorable winds are also blowing on the second-hand market, with transactions up 83% in the first half. The Zoé is still in the limelight with 5,454 vehicles having changed hands, which means that about as many motorists are newcomers to “zero emission” mobility.
“With 50,000 new registrations registered in the last 12 months, France has just passed the bar of 250,000 electric vehicles including 200,000 100% electric! If the figures are good, it is imperative to accelerate the momentum to reach the goal of one million electric vehicles by 2022 “ recalls Cécile Goubet, General Delegate of Avere-France.”
We can only do this by simplifying co-ownership recharging. If the mobility orientation law will partially facilitate the deployment of charging stations, it does not resolve the issue of collective residential: then the ordinances of the ELAN law must imperatively simplify the procedures. New models arrive every month on the market, the local authorities set up circulation facilities for the cleanest vehicles: the last brake must quickly be lifted!“
On the European scale, France takes third place on the podium for sales of electric cars for the first nine months of the year (38,646 vehicles), behind Norway (38,646 ex.) And Germany (35,924 ex.). It also rose to second position in terms of the number of available charging points, 27,661 against 40,769 in the Netherlands.
A rather encouraging indication insofar as the question of the terminals is a fundamental datum for the development of electric mobility. This Wednesday morning was published a large European study carried out by the Ipsos institute for LeasePlan, conducted with more than 4,000 people in 16 countries, which shows in particular that 51% of people planning to buy a car in the five years to come cited the lack of charging infrastructure as an obstacle preventing them from opting for an electric vehicle.
In short, the more terminals there are, the more electric vehicles there will be. It’s (almost) as simple as that.
