French motorists have expressed outrage on social media after revelations that the Government’s new emissions tariffs will push the price of some new cars up by 50%.
The new sliding-scale tariff arrangement will see cars emitting more than 193 grams will be slugged with an automatic €60,000 surcharge, while no cars emitting fewer than 117 grams of CO2/kilometre attract no tariffs at all.
A current BMW M3, priced at €110,000 in France, would jump to €170,000 because its Worldwide Light Harmonized Test Protocol (WLTP) emissions figure is around 220 grams/km of CO2.
The tariffs would apply to every vehicle in the top 10 French new cars sold last year, all of which were French-made or French-owned.
Part of a national emissions roadmap from French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the tariffs are aimed at reducing emissions from the transport industry, in line with the EU’s 2030 emissions target of a 50% reduction over 1990 figures.
France’s emissions levels are already 25% lower than its 1990 emissions, though the country’s energy is consistently the greenest in Europe, averaging just 43 grams of CO2 per kWh of electricity consumption over the past 12 months, according to opendata.reseaux-energies.fr.
Almost 95% of French electricity is generated by low-carbon production, and 27% has come from renewable energy in the last 12 months.
In the same period, neighbors Germany needed to emit 370 grams of CO2 for each kWh of energy produced, while south central Italy needed 349 grams, northern Italy 276 grams, the UK 208 grams and Poland a whopping 733 grams.
The French Government’s idea is to push French motorists to leverage the country’s clean electricity grid via electric cars, which French automakers Peugeot, Citroen and Renault all offer.
There is an electric version of the best-selling Peugeot 208, but the best-selling exclusively electric car in France last year was the Dacia Spring, while the Tesla Model 3 ranked 23d overall and the aging Renault Zoe fell to 33rd in sales last year.
French drivers bought 889,776 new vehicles in the first half of this year, according to the CCFA (which collates French car sales), and 137,919 of them were BEVs, an increase of 47.8% over the same period in 2022.
But the French Government is also aware of its past issues with adjusting driver habits, after the Yellow Vest revolt over fuel-tax increases in 2018.
France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, has pledged to make France the first major nation to abandon fossil fuels, at a time when the UK is trying to push its 2030 automotive emissions reductions back to 2035.
By comparison, the US greenhouse-reduction target is 50-52% by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels), as industrialized nations struggle to meet the UN climate science panel’s demands for a 43% reduction in CO2 emissions this decade.
While India and China have long-term carbon-neutral plans (for 2060 and 2070 respectively), they have not announced any 2030 targets.
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