The State has just launched a consultation on retrofitting, in order to find solutions that will help develop this practice, in particular by lowering its cost.
The electric car already represents one in ten sales in France. And this share will only increase, up to almost ten out of ten sales, since in 2035, we will only find new so-called “zero emission” vehicles in French dealerships.
However, on this date, if the sale of a new thermal model will be prohibited, the use of those already in circulation will obviously not be. According to the government, in 2035, there will still be at least 20 million thermals on our roads, or half of the fleet.
To achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, the government therefore wants to use other levers, starting with the retrofit, this technique which makes it possible to convert a thermal model into an electrical model. If this transformation was authorized a few years ago, it remains today a niche activity. The government is aware that there are blocking points, in particular financial, but also administrative.
The government has already announced aid to finance projects. At the Paris Motor Show in October, he promised an envelope of 20 million euros for retrofit professionals, “to finance industrial solutions allowing this technology to be scaled up in order to ‘lower the unit cost’. The goal is therefore to make the retrofit more accessible for individuals and professionals, while a transformation currently has a crazy cost, around 10,000 € for a small model.
In addition, the executive is launching a consultation on the retrofit, to better understand what would get stuck and thus better support the sector. The consultation aims to identify:
- new development projects and structuring investments to accelerate the scaling up of retrofitting.
- existing competitive retrofit offers allowing households to have an electric vehicle.
Sector professionals have two months to their proposals on a dedicated site.
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