The day after the final blow of the gavel signing the end of COP28, Emmanuel Macron commits to new announcements to accelerate the environmental transition. “And among the actions that we are going to take, there is replacing our so-called thermal vehicles with electric vehicles,” he recalls in a video published on social networks which announces the contours of social leasing. And a date: this system allowing popular categories and part of the middle classes to rent an electric vehicle for 100 euros per month will begin on January 1, 2024.
Emmanuel Macron’s campaign promise during the 2022 presidential election, the device was due to arrive in November. But the site allowing you to test your eligibility The device finally arrives this Thursday, two weeks before the first reservations. Due to the still low production of eligible vehicles, the offer will initially be reserved for active heavy drivers (more than 8,000 km per year or who live more than 15 km from their place of work) and whose tax income per share will be less than 15,400 euros per year – a single person on the minimum wage will therefore be eligible. Concretely, the people concerned will go through approved private sector rental companies who could distribute the first keys during January.
Cost of 13,000 euros per vehicle
These criteria mean that social leasing currently only concerns 4 to 5 million people, estimates the Elysée, which forecasts 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles rented using this system in 2024.. We are still far from the 100,000 electric cars announced during Emmanuel Macron’s campaign promise. Used cars will certainly be affected by the system, and rental companies who have a fleet of eligible electric vehicles will be able to offer them, but their number is currently starving. The cost of new cars affected by the system should be 25,000 euros or less, such as the Peugeot e-2008, the Twingo e-Tech or the next Citroën e-C3. To enable social leasing, the State will double the amount of the ecological bonus and cover the first rent, which will provide aid of 13,000 euros per vehicle and for 2024 a total cost of 260 to 325 million euros, before the expected increase in demand over the coming years. “It’s a unique device in the world,” trumpets the Elysée, which assures that other countries have obtained information on the system.
Several announcements have also been made on the ecological bonus. We knew that it would now be reserved for vehicles produced and assembled with low-carbon energy. These criteria allow the government to exclude vehicles produced in China, with often unbeatable value for money, such as those from the MG and BYD brands, or even the Tesla Model 3. The list of “forty vehicles” who will now be eligible will be released this Friday at Official newspaper, but the Tesla Model Y, among the best-selling in Europe, assembled in Germany – part of which is still produced in China – will feature well in it.
The amounts of the ecological bonus (currently 5,000 euros for the purchase of a new vehicle without resource conditions, 7,000 euros below a certain level of income) will be detailed by the end of the year by the ministries, even if the Elysée already announces “some drops and some rises”.
“It concerns so few people that it is mainly marketing, deplores to Release Karima Delli, Ecologist MEP. Above all, we need a serious response to rail and public transport, these are the real answers that the French are waiting for in terms of mobility.” In the spring, the government also announced a 100 billion euro plan for rail transport in France. But the time of the train is not that of the car.