we must “move without delay from a logic of incitement to a logic of solidarity”

FFaced with the challenges of the fight against climate change and against air pollution, clean mobility is a major objective, in the very short term. And to hope to achieve it, we must get everyone on board: there will only be an ecological transition if it is inclusive, if not only does it not aggravate social and territorial fractures, but on the contrary contributes to reduce them. We are convinced that it is possible, within reach.

Because they own an old vehicle fleet, which is very polluting and expensive to maintain, the small entrepreneurs, employees and job seekers whom we have been financing and supporting for over thirty years will, in the months and years come, purely and simply prevented from circulating in low emission zones (ZFE), that is to say in urban areas: in other words, they will no longer be able to work or live as full citizens.

The deployment of EPZs is obviously not an option: the climate emergency like the public health emergency in our cities cannot be debated. This is why the challenge is not to delay or slow down the effort, but on the contrary to allow those who do not have the means to be fully active citizens.

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To do this, small entrepreneurs, self-employed workers, employees or low-income job seekers must be given the financial capacity to access less polluting vehicles allowing them to work tomorrow.

Ecological efficiency and social justice

However, the use of electric vehicles, even heavily subsidized, is not currently a solution for the poorest: European electric vehicles remain financially unaffordable on the new market and very rare, even non-existent in the case of utility vehicles, on the second-hand market, not to mention access to charging infrastructure, which is still largely theoretical for people who do not have individual accommodation with private parking.

Read also: Winding road for the electric car

This is why we regret that the President of the Republic’s announcement at the Paris Motor Show, entirely devoted to the industrial strategy in favor of electric vehicles, ignored the social dimension and the reality faced by the most modest, even though the carbon gains to be expected in the short term from the replacement of old, highly polluting vehicles by recent, second-hand thermal vehicles are much greater than those that will result from the replacement of the latter by new electric vehicles!

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