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The share of electric vehicles in new car sales increased

Written by on February 3, 2023

The destruction of the Signal, in Soulac-Sur-Mer (Gironde), will begin on Friday February 3. The concrete giant has become the symbol of global warming, and of the difficult fight to protect the coast.
In a few days, the diggers will have definitively erased the Signal from the landscape of Soulac-Sur-Mer (Gironde), a concrete bar from the 1960s. At the time, holidaymakers took binoculars to watch their children on the beach, 200 meters away. Then the dune receded. During the winter of 2014, storms plowed the coast. Threatened, the Signal was evacuated.

France’s erosion record
All that remains today is a carcass, a symbol of rampant erosion. Soulac-sur-Mer is still fighting against the ocean. If houses are saved, residents, yet further from the coast, are worried. “We arrived in 1976, there was a whole forest to cross, (…) we were far from the beach. And now (…) if we are 60 meters away, it’s a maximum”, confides Frédérique Blanc. The beach located to the south of the town breaks the French record for erosion: the coastline is receding in places by 10 m per year.

To lower the French energy bill, the government wants to encourage them to convert to geothermal energy, which consists of drawing renewable heat from the ground.
To limit our energy impact on the planet, a solution exists. Under our feet, about 200 meters deep, geothermal energy. It is a local, renewable and carbon-free energy. To make it, you need rock and water. In the Paris region, a gas-heated building switched to geothermal energy two years ago. “Today, geothermal energy is great but in fact nobody knows about it, nobody sees it,” says Cindy Demichel, geologist behind the change.

Halve the energy bill

Pipes are connected to a dozen wells, which carry water 170 meters. At this depth, the temperature is 14°C. The water captures the calories from the ground and brings them to the surface in a heat pump installed in the basement of the building. The heat pump will then increase the heat, to heat the building. Thanks to geothermal energy, the building has reduced its carbon footprint by 90%. The cost of the installation is one million euros, but the energy bill will be halved.

What hides the record figure of 12.1% of electric cars sold in Europe?
The share of electric vehicles in new car sales increased in 2022, without calling into question the dominance of internal combustion vehicles in the European vehicle fleet.

There have never been so many new electric cars sold in Europe. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) announced on Wednesday February 1 that battery-powered vehicles accounted for 12.1% of sales in the European Union in 2022. An increase of three points compared to the previous year, in a context where the number of new cars sold fell. In 2035, the sale of new thermal vehicles, including non-rechargeable hybrids (HNR) and rechargeable hybrids (HR), will be banned in the EU to limit global warming, caused by the combustion of fossil fuels such as oil.

“It’s the European rules on average emissions from new vehicles that work. Selling electric vehicles is one of the best ways for manufacturers to meet targets. We see that advertising has changed and that’s good,” analyzes Mathieu Chassignet, engineer specializing in sustainable mobility, for franceinfo.
The thermal still dominates
However, these figures should not mask the reality of the European vehicle fleet. “The share of electric cars is gradually increasing, but it remains very low, at French and European level”, nuance Aurélien Bigo, researcher specializing in the energy transition of transport.

He also underlines that the renewal of the car fleet is still done “massively with thermal vehicles” in France and in Europe. According to figures from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, electric cars represented 1% of the French car fleet on January 1, 2022.

Too big and too expensive cars
Beyond this growing but still limited electrification, the two specialists note that the automotive market is not making progress on the other decarbonization levers. “We continue to sell increasingly larger [new] vehicles. The SUV market share is still increasing,” notes Mathieu Chassignet (46% in Europe in 2021, according to ACEA). In a notice published in 2022, the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe) explains that the electric car is less polluting than its thermal counterpart over its entire life cycle – it is polluting to produce, but much less to use. use – provided it remains light.

“On the sobriety lever, it is not going at all in the right direction”, abounds Aurélien Bigo, who regrets that there is “no incentive from public policies” for lighter and more sober vehicles. The challenge is not only ecological, it is also social. At present, the selling price of electric cars is “far too high for the majority of people”. A lighter electric vehicle, therefore smaller and with less autonomy, would also be cheaper to buy.

The share of electric vehicles in new car sales increased

Written by on February 3, 2023

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The share of electric vehicles in new car sales increased

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