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

165 points by finphil 6y ago

pingou 6y 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.
- rsynnott 6y 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 6y 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.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Wait, how does this credit work? If someone can make a 6k electric car, can you basically get a free EV?
  - lucb1e 6y 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 6y ago
Is that new registrations, or total vehicles registered?
- wcoenen 6y ago
  The title of the pie chart in the article is "December 2020 France passenger auto registrations".
valuearb 6y ago
Is electricity significantly cheaper in France because of the abundance of nuclear? Or are nuclear costs high there as well?
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Not super-cheap, but on the cheaper end for Western Europe: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
  - lucb1e 6y 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.
    - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
      I'm a major LFTR fan/stan, but new nuclear projects aren't a good idea with the cost curves for wind/solar generation and battery storage dropping 10% per year at a minimum. Over the 5-10 years of a major nuke project planning and construction, they're going to see their target cost undercut by wind/solar by massive margins. Obviously those curves won't last forever, once they stabilize, then new nuke projects will have a more stable target.
      - lucb1e 6y ago
        I'd happily pay today's prices if that means we can stop worrying whether we'll find enough physical space. We still need to fill as much as we can find, but we're not bound by it. The USA has it easy so to speak. Higher density countries, especially if they don't want to fill literally their whole share of the sea with wind (which is also much more expensive than on land), if they have any sea to begin with... e.g. I heard that southeastern Germany has much less wind because they have a higher minimum distance between villages and wind turbines, but I don't remember where I read that (whether they have less wind installed was a quicker check[2], omw to bed since it's 5am here). They already can't find space to put them and green energy is only at like 5% of their energy need (33% of the electricity[3], which is 15% of the energy need[4]). In fact, if you look at the graph of [3], renewables are so far mostly replacing nuclear production and fossil fuels are still going strong. This just isn't the time to phase fission out, yet, regardless of whether anyone is in favor of building it out. I just think it's silly to exclude many many megawatts of the safest kind of green energy. We're barely scratching the surface of replacing power generation, let alone the other ~90% of fossil fuel usage (e.g. in the Netherlands, 112TWh is electricity versus 900TWh total fossil fuel usage per year[1]). It's like deciding not to bring more oxygen to the international space station, hoping you'll be able to find enough room to grow plants instead. Just that the experiment we're doing is on the scale of a planet and decades ahead with a notoriously hard to predict future. I say we should start building today and, as soon as we then can, turn off the fossil fuel based power plants, replace the lion's share of combustion engine cars, etc. that contribute to killing or impairing millions of people every year[5], rather than (to use the previous comparison) worrying whether oxygen production by vegetation might be cheaper than lifting up some more oxygen. "Will it keep us going strong" is perhaps a better question than "what's the cheapest option that will make it look like we're making good progress to the majority of our voters?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands [2] https://1-stromvergleich.com/wind-power-germany/ https://1-stromvergleich.com/wind-power-germany/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Germany_Electricity_production_1991-2017_(EIA).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution "air pollution causes the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide each year, and is the world's largest single environmental health risk"
hartator 6y ago
EV or hybrid?
- ggreer 6y 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-Passenger-Auto-Registrations-Tidy.png https://cleantechnica.com/files/2021/01/December-2020-France...
- Triv888 6y ago
  it's both, the title is misleading
jeffbee 6y 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.
- xoa 6y 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 6y 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.
incompatible 6y 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-zoe-electric-car/ https://www.caradvice.com.au/869447/plug-pulled-on-renault-z...
- howlgarnish 6y 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.
- rsynnott 6y 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.
  - sfblah 6y ago
    Maybe it's the relatively long distances in Australia? I don't live there so maybe I'm totally wrong.
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      And don't forget the American culture of owning huge fuel wasters and being proud of their expensive purchase. Long distances in countries like Australia and the USA sound like legitimate reasons for ICE vehicles, but the more cynical side of me assumes that USA culture leaking into Australia is at least equally likely.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      What's the 90th percentile trip length in Australia compared to France? I bet it's not that much different.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ketamine__ 6y ago
Is air pollution decreasing?
- Triv888 6y ago
  Apple will probably ban you if you are using an iphone
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    ?
    - Triv888 6y ago
      drug/ketamine ...
erik_seaberg 6y 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 6y 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/ https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/parking/electric-charging/ Amsterdam charging station map: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/traffic-transport/map-charging-station/ https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/traffic-transport/map-charging-s...
tibbydudeza 6y ago
I wish Tesla made something more affordable and mass market like the Renault ZOE.
- grecy 6y 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.
  - sfblah 6y 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?
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Nobody can do everything at once. At some point staffing and training becomes a bottleneck.
      - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
        They should probably buy a struggling automaker (Nissan, etc) for access to supply chains and raw amounts of automotive engineers. Nissan should have substantive numbers of EV engineers too. At a minimum that would enable working on a minivan, smaller cars, and other form factors, especially if it is under a different badge. But that assumes that car design is the bottleneck, it may still be battery supply, and nothing matters until that is solved. Given their apparent quality problems, I'd guess it's not all battery issues.
        chmod775 6y ago
tpmx 6y 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-new-record-in-november-37-8-market-share/ 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 6y 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.
  - tpmx 6y 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.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      If the next-best alternative on point (c) was nuclear, nuclear is probably less polluting. But since nuclear is off the table, since people react really poorly to rare events that cause towns to be uninhabitable, the next-best for (c) is going to be natural gas or another fossil source. I'll take wind any day.
      - 6y ago
haltingproblem 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
  And in 7 they’d be 110 percent! Jokes aside, there could be a long tail to EV adoption.
finikytou 6y 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_00 6y 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=USD https://www.numbeo.com/gas-prices/in/Paris?displayCurrency=U...
- Wowfunhappy 6y 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.
  - quasse 6y 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/fuelfee.aspx https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/dmv/vehicles/title-plates/fue... [2] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
    - lazylizard 6y ago
      that implies that electricity is unfairly undertaxed. solution is to tax electricity not 1 of the uses of electricity?
      - quasse 6y ago
        I guess I'm not quite following, especially since any electricity used by a non-plugin hybrid vehicle is generated directly from gasoline. If the goal was truly to "fairly" tax road use, registration fees should be based on vehicle weight and not fuel type.
        6y ago
SimeVidas 6y ago
That site has two cookie banners. It’s getting worse.
weddpros 6y 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?
- guerby 6y 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/2017/12/12/20005-20171212ARTFIG00063-le-secteur-public-gere-mieux-son-parc-automobile.php 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 6y 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.

165 points by finphil 6y 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.

rsynnott 6y 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 6y 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.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Wait, how does this credit work? If someone can make a 6k electric car, can you basically get a free EV?
- lucb1e 6y 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 6y ago

Is that new registrations, or total vehicles registered?

wcoenen 6y ago
The title of the pie chart in the article is "December 2020 France passenger auto registrations".

valuearb 6y ago

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

rsynnott 6y ago
Not super-cheap, but on the cheaper end for Western Europe: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- lucb1e 6y 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.
  - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
    I'm a major LFTR fan/stan, but new nuclear projects aren't a good idea with the cost curves for wind/solar generation and battery storage dropping 10% per year at a minimum. Over the 5-10 years of a major nuke project planning and construction, they're going to see their target cost undercut by wind/solar by massive margins. Obviously those curves won't last forever, once they stabilize, then new nuke projects will have a more stable target.
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      I'd happily pay today's prices if that means we can stop worrying whether we'll find enough physical space. We still need to fill as much as we can find, but we're not bound by it. The USA has it easy so to speak. Higher density countries, especially if they don't want to fill literally their whole share of the sea with wind (which is also much more expensive than on land), if they have any sea to begin with... e.g. I heard that southeastern Germany has much less wind because they have a higher minimum distance between villages and wind turbines, but I don't remember where I read that (whether they have less wind installed was a quicker check[2], omw to bed since it's 5am here). They already can't find space to put them and green energy is only at like 5% of their energy need (33% of the electricity[3], which is 15% of the energy need[4]). In fact, if you look at the graph of [3], renewables are so far mostly replacing nuclear production and fossil fuels are still going strong. This just isn't the time to phase fission out, yet, regardless of whether anyone is in favor of building it out. I just think it's silly to exclude many many megawatts of the safest kind of green energy. We're barely scratching the surface of replacing power generation, let alone the other ~90% of fossil fuel usage (e.g. in the Netherlands, 112TWh is electricity versus 900TWh total fossil fuel usage per year[1]). It's like deciding not to bring more oxygen to the international space station, hoping you'll be able to find enough room to grow plants instead. Just that the experiment we're doing is on the scale of a planet and decades ahead with a notoriously hard to predict future. I say we should start building today and, as soon as we then can, turn off the fossil fuel based power plants, replace the lion's share of combustion engine cars, etc. that contribute to killing or impairing millions of people every year[5], rather than (to use the previous comparison) worrying whether oxygen production by vegetation might be cheaper than lifting up some more oxygen. "Will it keep us going strong" is perhaps a better question than "what's the cheapest option that will make it look like we're making good progress to the majority of our voters?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands [2] https://1-stromvergleich.com/wind-power-germany/ https://1-stromvergleich.com/wind-power-germany/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Germany_Electricity_production_1991-2017_(EIA).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution "air pollution causes the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide each year, and is the world's largest single environmental health risk"

hartator 6y ago

EV or hybrid?

ggreer 6y 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-Passenger-Auto-Registrations-Tidy.png https://cleantechnica.com/files/2021/01/December-2020-France...
Triv888 6y ago
it's both, the title is misleading

jeffbee 6y 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.

xoa 6y 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 6y 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.

incompatible 6y 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-zoe-electric-car/ https://www.caradvice.com.au/869447/plug-pulled-on-renault-z...

howlgarnish 6y 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.
rsynnott 6y 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.
- sfblah 6y ago
  Maybe it's the relatively long distances in Australia? I don't live there so maybe I'm totally wrong.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    And don't forget the American culture of owning huge fuel wasters and being proud of their expensive purchase. Long distances in countries like Australia and the USA sound like legitimate reasons for ICE vehicles, but the more cynical side of me assumes that USA culture leaking into Australia is at least equally likely.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    What's the 90th percentile trip length in Australia compared to France? I bet it's not that much different.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ketamine__ 6y ago

Is air pollution decreasing?

Triv888 6y ago
Apple will probably ban you if you are using an iphone
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  ?
  - Triv888 6y ago
    drug/ketamine ...

erik_seaberg 6y 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 6y 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/ https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/parking/electric-charging/ Amsterdam charging station map: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/traffic-transport/map-charging-station/ https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/traffic-transport/map-charging-s...

tibbydudeza 6y ago

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

grecy 6y 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.
- sfblah 6y 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?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Nobody can do everything at once. At some point staffing and training becomes a bottleneck.
    - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
      They should probably buy a struggling automaker (Nissan, etc) for access to supply chains and raw amounts of automotive engineers. Nissan should have substantive numbers of EV engineers too. At a minimum that would enable working on a minivan, smaller cars, and other form factors, especially if it is under a different badge. But that assumes that car design is the bottleneck, it may still be battery supply, and nothing matters until that is solved. Given their apparent quality problems, I'd guess it's not all battery issues.
      - chmod775 6y ago

tpmx 6y 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-new-record-in-november-37-8-market-share/ 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 6y 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.
- tpmx 6y 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.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    If the next-best alternative on point (c) was nuclear, nuclear is probably less polluting. But since nuclear is off the table, since people react really poorly to rare events that cause towns to be uninhabitable, the next-best for (c) is going to be natural gas or another fossil source. I'll take wind any day.
    - 6y ago

haltingproblem 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
And in 7 they’d be 110 percent! Jokes aside, there could be a long tail to EV adoption.

finikytou 6y 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_00 6y 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=USD https://www.numbeo.com/gas-prices/in/Paris?displayCurrency=U...

Wowfunhappy 6y 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.
- quasse 6y 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/fuelfee.aspx https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/dmv/vehicles/title-plates/fue... [2] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
  - lazylizard 6y ago
    that implies that electricity is unfairly undertaxed. solution is to tax electricity not 1 of the uses of electricity?
    - quasse 6y ago
      I guess I'm not quite following, especially since any electricity used by a non-plugin hybrid vehicle is generated directly from gasoline. If the goal was truly to "fairly" tax road use, registration fees should be based on vehicle weight and not fuel type.
      - 6y ago

SimeVidas 6y ago

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

weddpros 6y 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?

guerby 6y 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/2017/12/12/20005-20171212ARTFIG00063-le-secteur-public-gere-mieux-son-parc-automobile.php 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 6y 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.