Insufficient, disparate and complex systems… This is what emerges from a complete inventory of low-emission mobility aids for individuals in France published at the end of October by the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. This while the low emission zones (ZFE), already in force in certain cities, will gradually become widespread, by 2025, in all agglomerations of more than 150,000 inhabitants.
The study scrutinizes aid for the purchase of new, second-hand and retrofit (thermal vehicle adapted to electric) for six types of electric vehicles (cars, electrically assisted bicycles, cargo bikes, scooters, quadricycles, light commercial vehicles). And this in 125 geographical entities (13 regions, 96 departments, 11 cities subject to a ZFE obligation or having already implemented it, 5 overseas departments and regions).
Secours Catholique, the Climate Action Network and Transport & Environment – three associations committed to cleaner mobility – are reacting to this observation, warning about “the urgency of a more ambitious and coherent support policy on a national scale”. At the risk, they fear, that “many citizens fall into precarious mobility”.
First observation: the geographic imbroglio of aid (103 identified from national to local), “source of inefficiency and social injustice”believe the associations. “Beyond the fact that no region, department or city offers the same thing, this study brings to light the existence of many white areas where no support for less polluting mobility is offered” , emphasizes Valentin Desfontaines of the Climate Action Network.
Among these white areas, we find the regions of Brittany, Centre-Val de Loire, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the five DROMs (Mayotte, Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana). Or the metropolis of Marseille, a recent ZFE “which offers no help to its inhabitants to encourage less polluting mobility”. That is more than 13 million French people concerned, according to the estimate of the associations.
“Simplify” and “inform”
Conversely, communities make gestures, but it is difficult to navigate through the tangle of conditions, variables, linked to the level of income, the geographical scope, the cost of purchase or the mode of acquisition. For example, aid from the Grand-Est region for a new electric car: to benefit from regional aid of 2,000 to 4,000 euros (cumulative with national aid: conversion bonus and ecological bonus) depending on tax income reference, you must live in a rural municipality (but not all of them are eligible) and buy a vehicle worth less than 40,000 euros including tax from a dealer in the region.
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