France Hits Record 19.2% EV Share in December – Up Almost 6× Year on Year

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/02/france-hits-record-19-2-ev-share-in-december-up-almost-6x-year-on-year/

by finphil • 6 years ago

165 132 6 years ago

pingou• 6 years ago

A reason may also be that starting on January 1st, the state gives you 6000 euros if you buy an electric car, compared to 7000 in 2020.

Still, there is definitely a trend here.

rsynnott3• 6 years ago

Worth noting that the top three cars are all new in 2020 (in the Zoe's case a major improvement on the existing model, in the other two cases brand new). I suspect a big part of it is that electric cars that people actually want have finally arrived.

da_big_ghey• 6 years ago

Another potential factot is that fewer/different people are buying cars these days, and that group may be more prone to buy electric cars.

runawaybottle2• 6 years ago

Wait, how does this credit work? If someone can make a 6k electric car, can you basically get a free EV?

lucb1e5• 6 years ago

If you can find me a new EV for €6k that goes up to 90km/h with 150km range (any weather, reliably, and for at least ~5 years), please let me know I'll come pick it up today and pay cash.

Last I checked, everything is north of twice that amount unless you omit the battery. I'd be willing to pay more for something amazing like an Aptera, though not super much because I'd simply not get enough use out of it: it won't ever beat taking mass transport to work, also because on mass transport I can relax before/after work instead of driving, so it will only ever be for weekend trips to my (girlfriend's) parents, grocery trips, etc. That's also why 45km/h electric cars or scooters are not worth it, they'd just replace local trips which I mostly do by bus anyway.

I'd also be happy with second-hand, but I have no idea about maintenance costs as I never owned any vehicle other than bikes. (I do have a driver's license and regular driving experience, it's just that I borrow what I'm driving.)

Animats• 6 years ago

Is that new registrations, or total vehicles registered?

wcoenen• 6 years ago

The title of the pie chart in the article is "December 2020 France passenger auto registrations".

valuearb• 6 years ago

Is electricity significantly cheaper in France because of the abundance of nuclear? Or are nuclear costs high there as well?

rsynnott3• 6 years ago

Not super-cheap, but on the cheaper end for Western Europe: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

lucb1e5• 6 years ago

Meanwhile, most people I talk to IRL about the topic, after having had the safety talk: "But nuclear is too expensive!"

Strangely they never have comparative prices or can explain why France doesn't have super high energy prices.

Bayart• 6 years ago

The rates are just around the EU average. But it also means it's not far away from countries having a massive amount of coal plants, so not too bad.

hartator• 6 years ago

EV or hybrid?

ggreer• 6 years ago

The third sentence in the article:

The December combined plugin share of 19.2% was dominated by battery electric vehicles (BEVs) at 11.1% of the total auto market, with plugin hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) taking 8.1%.

The article also has a chart showing the breakdown.[1]

1. https://cleantechnica.com/files/2021/01/December-2020-France...

Triv8883• 6 years ago

it's both, the title is misleading

jeffbee• 6 years ago

Any improvement in this number is nice, but remember that EVs would have to be 100% of the market for 12 years before they were a majority of vehicles on the road.

xoa2• 6 years ago

but remember that EVs would have to be 100% of the market for 12 years before they were a majority of vehicles on the road.

Are you assuming a fixed rate of retirement for ICE vehicles? I've long wondered if the growth line of EVs would end up being yet another example of an S-curve rather than linear as so many seem to expect. It definitely seems like there are potential tipping point factors on both sides of the equation, because fossil fuel infrastructure has a ton of capex and opex that works due to massive amortization across a big enough fleet. And simultaneously justification for huge EV infrastructure investments, and the mass manufacturing necessary to keep prices marching down, faces some level of bootstrapping and amortization issues too. Plus, lack itself is a hindrance if people aren't confident about charging up.

But it's easy to see how that could flip, and then in a surprising hurry go in reverse. At some level of shrinking ICE usage a lot of gas stations themselves become non-viable. And then suddenly it starts to get harder to fuel up, in turn driving the dynamic even faster right? It seems probable that there will be some inertia due to lagging specialized applications, demand amongst niches like collectors, etc for a while. But it seems possible the new equilibrium might get reached non-linearly. And that's ignoring and political tipping points that could happen too, if a majority of people have EVs, or even a very sizable minority (say 20-40%), what happens to political support for current extensive systems of explicit and implicit subsidies fossil fuels enjoy?

dmurray• 6 years ago

Are you assuming a fixed rate of retirement for ICE vehicles?

Yes, that calculation assumes that, but it doesn't matter that much - if we take your alternative into account, either EVs have to be 100% of new cars for 12 years, or there has to be a big increase in new cars sold, which would be news in itself.

Or some less likely alternatives, like a huge mode switch to public transport or a global pandemic causing a mode switch to working from home or something.

tialaramex• 6 years ago

Yes. There are communities where their fuel station isn't commercially viable but it's propped up because without it the community dies. They own their fuel station (often built by a chain or local owner which went out of business because it doesn't make commercial sense), a local is paid to run it, they buy fuel from a smaller supplier that doesn't have its own chain and then they retail it at either a modest loss or zero profit - because without fuel some residents would leave and having left they won't be replaced. I can see some of those communities deciding we'll go electric and divert the funding that keeps the fuel station alive to other things that help our community and have a future.

scrollaway• 6 years ago

I agree with your general point but on the gas stations I don't think it holds. Gas stations will keep serving gas as long as there's even some vague demand for it, so they would start disappearing rather at the end point of such an s-curve, than at the beginning.

And they'll still be around, they'll just serve electricity. Fun fact, a lot of gas stations used to serve as stables. When cars arrived, they served both and gradually stopped being stables.

Though with electricity being overall so much easier to distribute than gas, I'm guessing a significant amount will indeed have to close, especially inside cities; no point going to a refueling station if a charger is available at nearly every corner, when you're parked while eating at the restaurant, or when you're home asleep and charging from your garage.

Retric• 6 years ago

In terms of emissions it’s far less than that as older cars are driven dramatically less on average. The average male driver in the US travels 16,550 miles a year. That hits 400k miles in just 24 years, meanwhile it’s somewhat unusual for cars to break 300k miles.

Instead, family members that drive less tend to have older cars.

guerby8• 6 years ago

In France about 2 millions car are sold each year:

http://www.fiches-auto.fr/articles-auto/l-auto-en-chiffres/s...

For about 40 millions cars, so 5%/year.

Also older cars tend to do less distance each passing years

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-annual-mileage-A...

As for petrol vehicules I assume once passed a certain level of EV they will become harder to fuel and maintain because petrol vehicule services will no longer be profitable and will disappear.

incompatible• 6 years ago

I looked up the Zoe in Australia: it was withdrawn due to poor sales, despite being one of the cheapest EVs on the market at about $47k AUD.

https://www.caradvice.com.au/869447/plug-pulled-on-renault-z...

howlgarnish• 6 years ago

It's hard to justify $47k for the Zoe when you can get a similarly sized Honda Jazz or Mazda 2 for well under $20k.

rsynnott3• 6 years ago

Odd; it's one of the most popular in the EU. Though electric car sales in Australia in general seem to be very low.

sfblah2• 6 years ago

Maybe it's the relatively long distances in Australia? I don't live there so maybe I'm totally wrong.

ketamine__2• 6 years ago

Is air pollution decreasing?

Triv8883• 6 years ago

Apple will probably ban you if you are using an iphone

ketamine__2• 6 years ago

erik_seaberg• 6 years ago

That is surprisingly high for a country with only 65% home ownership. Do French apartments mostly have garages or some kind of charging options?

Edit: ah, 8% are hybrids, the other 11% require reliable charger access.

seanman• 6 years ago

Speaking from Amsterdam, as I just moved here, many streets have electric charge stations. Each charge stations can charge up to three vehicles at once and you just hook up your cable. Exact details I don’t know, but thought it is a lot more apparen from what I saw in Seattle.

Edit - Again, not sure if France is anything similar, but I have found it super interesting.

More info: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/parking/electric-charging/

Amsterdam charging station map: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/traffic-transport/map-charging-s...

tibbydudeza• 6 years ago

I wish Tesla made something more affordable and mass market like the Renault ZOE.

grecy• 6 years ago

They're certainly working on it. At Battery day elon confirmed a smaller, mass-market affordable car.

He has also said many times a vehicle will be designed in China for the Chinese market, and a vehicle will be designed in Germany for the European market.

It's coming, but it all takes time, and they needed to focus on the high dollar products with high(er) margins so they could finance the lower ones.

sfblah2• 6 years ago

Serious question regarding your 3rd paragraph: Why? Doesn't Tesla have essentially unlimited access to capital? Why don't they just raise some massive amount of money, borrow more, and do everything right now?

runawaybottle2• 6 years ago

Isn’t that what the Model 3 is supposed to be?

speedgoose• 6 years ago

Not really. It's a quite expensive car for the French market.

benhurmarcel2• 6 years ago

The Model 3 starts at 51k€, that's $62k.

WhoCaresLies• 6 years ago

why would it be better for french to buy american cars? and not a french car?

you sounds like a mad $TSLA HODLer

guerby8• 6 years ago

In France in 2019 the average buying price of a new car was 26807 EUR according to:

https://www.ladepeche.fr/2020/07/23/une-voiture-neuve-coute-...

At battery day 2020 Tesla has announced a new small car to be designed in Germany and sold for around 25k USD in about 3 years.

25k USR is about 25k EUR when a 20% VAT is added (typical value for EU countries).

benhurmarcel2• 6 years ago

If only Tesla was known to reach their objectives…

tpmx2• 6 years ago

From another country that also has almost entirely co2-clean electric power, at least for now:

Sweden in November: 38.7%, up 2.7x YoY

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/02/swedens-ev-sales-hit-ne...

I worry about the current trend of both France and Sweden shutting down nuclear plants without building any replacements though. Wind power is great, I suppose (the jury is still out on the sustainability of the hardware - but it's not looking great at the moment - massive amounts of concrete needed causing kinda huge co2 emissions during the chemical manufacturing processes), but it's no good as a baseline power for days when there's no wind and the hydro power is running on low. The fallback for that scenario is burning coal or oil.

simplicio• 6 years ago

Baseline power is less of an issue for EVs, since they a) have their own energy storage built in, and b) generally just run ~ 1 hour a day, making it pretty easy to come up with schemes to shift demand around.

Agree the trend of decommissioning nuclear plants is counterproductive for other reasons though.

tpmx2• 6 years ago

I guess I'm mostly worried about the wind power trend.

a) Politicians love them

b) Politicians really don't understand power grids

c) They don't seem to be that "green", after all, if you consider the life span and the co2 emissions from the concrete manufacturing.

pengaru5• 6 years ago

Baseline power is less of an issue for EVs, since they a) have their own energy storage built in, and b) generally just run ~ 1 hour a day, making it pretty easy to come up with schemes to shift demand around.

Is that really true when much of the employed population falls on a relatively uniform commute schedule?

I'd expect similar congestion to what's seen on roadways to recur on an inadequate power grid.

pjc502• 6 years ago

Massive amounts of concrete are also required for nuclear plants to be built. You've got to quantify it or it's scaremongering.

lucb1e5• 6 years ago

You've got to quantify it or it's scaremongering.

roenxi• 6 years ago

It is an interesting question. I did an estimate:

1x Windmill, 3.6MW for 500 m3 concrete [0, 1]

1x Hinkley Point C base, nameplate 3.2GW for 18,000 m3 [2]

I don't know how much Hinkley Point overall might use, because a lot might go into the shell, so say the overall build is an order of magnitude more than the base. That is 180k m3 of concrete or about 360 windmill foundations in Hinkley with some rather unfavourable assumptions. So a 3.2 GW nuclear reactor might match up to ~1.3 GW of Windfarm.

Depending on how much goes into the base vs the shell it is probably somewhere between 3x to an order of magnitude favouring nuclear. Not considering relative lifetime, although I expect a nuclear concrete pour has better long-term prospects (how would they replace the windmill without re-pouring the base?).

[0] https://www.wagner.com.au/main/our-projects/sapphire-wind-fa...

[1] https://www.sapphirewindfarm.com.au/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

cbmuser3• 6 years ago

If there is anything that requires lots of materials per installed Megawatts then it’s solar and wind.

Your argument completely ignores the fact that nuclear has the highest energy density and availability of all currently available energy sources.

guerby8• 6 years ago

There are about 40 millions cars in France:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parc_automobile_fran%C3%A7ais

Cars are parked 95% of the time.

Even a smallish 2 kW car to grid capacity would give 80 GW of instantaneuous dispatchable power to the grid. And cars are distributed on all the territory.

If average battery is about 50 kWh that gives a whole day of France max demand.

And of course on the other way 80 GW of dispatchable demand.

For reference electro-nuclear production capacity is 62 GW in France.

A fully electric car fleet means the grid will just never go down.

jl6• 6 years ago

How would car owners be compensated for the grid using their car’s battery? More wear and tear from more charge/discharge cycles, and the potential for the car to not be fully charged when the owner needs it?

jokoon• 6 years ago

Thank you for this comment, underlining the advantage of nuclear versus renewables is a hard fight and I don't read that kind of comment very often.

Renewables clearly have no place when it comes to generate a lot of energy. They're interesting in a few cases where there's a lot of wind, or where there is no power grid and you need a little power.

Others advocate reducing energy consumption, but if we reduce co2 emissions from transport, we will need more electricity.

legulere• 6 years ago

Base load power generation is not something that you need, but it’s more of a description how to run an electric grid with slow power plants like nuclear or coal. With renewables you of course need a different strategy.

overscore3• 6 years ago

It's something that every installed grid in the world needs, and no-one is talking about replacing grid infrastructure.

Bombthecat2• 6 years ago

Well, in germany we at least decided that wind is not worth it...

We are basically building back wind farms and not building new ones.

estaseuropano3• 6 years ago

Citation?

vvillena• 6 years ago

Hydro will be the backup power. With enough solar and wind generation there's no need for hydro to be on all the time. Hydroelectric dams are the biggest energy storage facilities we have.

andromeduck3• 6 years ago

Hydro can't scale up to the extent of gas without causing massive floods and other havoc downstream. Batteries can probably help a lot for peak shaving but I think in the medium term is mostly going to displace SSGTs more than anything else.

7952• 6 years ago

The whole world consumes massive amounts of concrete for all kinds of construction project. The energy industry is a tiny part of that.

We should definitely try and reduce the amount of embodied CO2 in wind turbines. But it is hardly a differentiating factor when comparing nuclear and wind. Both are fantastic in terms of co2 when compared to the fossil fuels they are replacing. We only talk about embodied co2 because the other emissions are so non-existent!

Emissions from concrete are a problem which needs to be addressed separately to energy production. Other industries need to do their bit and provide alternatives.

haltingproblem• 6 years ago

This is not 19.2% of all cars on the road but 19.2% of December sales, which is still amazing. I thought for a moment it was 20% of all cars which would be super cool and amazing. That is not that is not the intent of the headline but just clarifying :)

rossdavidh• 6 years ago

Wow, at that rate of increase, even if it were just linear (and these things tend not to be), they would be at virtually 100% new car sales EV in 6 years.

Not that I'm predicting that would actually happen, just saying that's an enormous rate of increase in 12 months.

ericpauley• 6 years ago

And in 7 they’d be 110 percent! Jokes aside, there could be a long tail to EV adoption.

finikytou• 6 years ago

the real game changer is renault making the dacia spring in '21 for 15k (that will cost around 10keuros after state giving back 6k) this can make EV price competitive VS fuel

99_002• 6 years ago

A gallon of gas in Paris is $7.

France gets 70% of its power from nuclear.

https://www.numbeo.com/gas-prices/in/Paris?displayCurrency=U...

Wowfunhappy3• 6 years ago

What do you know, taxing fossil fuels so their prices (better) reflect their actual social cost makes people switch to greener alternatives!

Who would have thought.

quasse2• 6 years ago

Meanwhile the backwards state of Wisconsin has a special extra tax for hybrid vehicles, and then an even larger extra tax for electric vehicles [1]. The justification was that hybrids don't pay their "fair share" of fuel taxes - but it's not like I see the state government putting a huge tax on diesel fuel to tax the heavy trucks that actually are causing road wear. [2]

[1] https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/dmv/vehicles/title-plates/fue...

[2] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

99_002• 6 years ago

Watch what happens as revenue from fuel taxes decreases enough to threaten budgets.

cbmuser3• 6 years ago

The problem here is that any Carbon emissions caused by the production and use of electric cars are completely ignored.

In Germany, one kWh of electricity causes 400 grams of CO2 emissions, yet local law classifies electric drives as carbon-free.

cbmuser3• 6 years ago

Electric cars are also crazily subsidized in most EU countries.

SimeVidas• 6 years ago

That site has two cookie banners. It’s getting worse.

weddpros• 6 years ago

Because of the weight of the state in France, I'd like to know how many EVs are purchased by individuals vs. the state. Any idea?

guerby8• 6 years ago

The french central administration has about 65k cars. Total public sector number of cars is about 200-400k according to:

https://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2017/12/12/20005-20171212AR...

From what I can see I'd say public sector impact on EV sale is insignificant (36k just in december).

Also in France about half of sales are to fleet buyers, and those were up to now quite conservative and buying very little electric vehicules. I assume this will start to change soon.

warrenmiller• 6 years ago

In the Netherlands if you want to get a parking permit and have an EV you get put to the top of the list. Petrol and diesel cars have to wait months and months. Seems to be working pretty well.

France Hits Record 19.2% EV Share in December – Up Almost 6× Year on Year

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