This is a statistic that does not please Bruno Le Maire: “40% of the ecological bonus has gone, since the beginning of the year, to Asia”, plague the Minister of the Economy this Tuesday morning. The State devotes 1.2 billion euros per year to this system, which allocates 5,000 euros, without any income condition*, to the French so that they can swap their internal combustion engine car for an electric one. The problem is therefore that a good part of these subsidies are used to buy cars assembled in Asia. Like Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y, part of the production of which is done in Shanghai. The American brand voluntarily lowered the price to go below the 47,000 euros mark and thus be eligible for the bonus.
Result: more than 10,000 vehicles have been sold by the American brand to the detriment, in particular, of models from the French Renault or Stellantis.
“Not intended to finance a factory in Asia”
It was the controversy of the last days on which Bruno Le Maire rebounded again this Tuesday: “We are not intended to finance, with public funds, the development of factories in Asia”, he launches. This is then one of the fifteen measures of the Green Industry bill presented to the Council of Ministers: rethinking the criteria for awarding the ecological bonus to exclude “electric vehicles with low environmental performance”.
This bill, on which the government has been working in a loop since last Thursday, aims as much to decarbonise the industry already in place in France – which represents 18% of our greenhouse gas emissions – as to reindustrialise the country by attracting companies from the key sectors of the energy transition. The “big five”, as Bruno Le Maire calls it: heat pumps, wind power, photovoltaics, batteries and green hydrogen.
A response to the American IRA
But the game is far from over to convince these green industry leaders to invest in France. And it is not enough to invite them to Versailles, as Emmanuel Macron did on Monday for the sixth edition of the “Choose France” summit. “Under the gilding, the negotiations were tough”, agrees Bruno Le Maire, recalling that these companies are dredged up from all sides. “We are witnessing, since the Covid-19, an accelerated reorganization, as never for decades, of the value chains, continues the minister. A new globalization is taking shape, more brutal, where everyone defends their interests without qualms and where China and the United States have engaged in a merciless technological, economic and financial rivalry. »
In this context, France and Europe must find their place, argues the Minister. Redefining the criteria for awarding the ecological bonus is precisely part of this. In any case, Bercy presents this measure as one of the responses to the American Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a massive support plan for localized industrial production voted in the United States in January.
A bonus reserved for cars produced in Europe?
Bruno Le Maire assures us: “we will reserve the bonus for vehicles produced in Europe”. In the process, his cabinet tempers. To date, this subsidy applies to vehicles running exclusively on electricity, hydrogen or a combination of the two and weighing less than 2.4 tonnes. “The idea is to add new criteria in the future, we explain at Bercy. The carbon footprint of the battery, that of the steel used, the integration or not of recycled or biosourced materials, as well as the overall electrical mix that supplies the production site. »
Taking all these criteria into account will give rise to an environmental score, “similar to what is currently under construction on food or textiles”, we compare to the Ministry of Ecological Transition. In theory, the method should favor vehicles assembled in France, or at least in Europe. “But we will also allow manufacturers, wherever they are, to have a possibility of appeal to demonstrate that they meet the nails of the criteria that we are going to define”, we specify in the cabinet of Bruno Le Mayor. The question can also arise in the other direction, while many European countries where manufacturers, including French, have installed production plants, have an electricity production that is still based on coal or gas. This last criterion of the nature of the electricity mix in force could disadvantage them.
A method yet to be developed
Everything is still written in conditional, “the method, co-constructed with Ademe, being under development”, we indicate to the cabinet of Christophe Béchu, Minister of Ecological Transition. The idea is that it be stopped by decree this summer for an implementation of this new bonus by the end of 2023, we specify in Bercy.
The green industry bill should pass before the Senate, in first reading, in mid-June, then in the National Assembly a month later..
*7,000 euros even for the most modest households