With a support plan for second-hand electric cars, the Netherlands wants to make electric driving more accessible. In France, something similar already exists: people with lower incomes can apply for 'social leasing', a social lease plan for electric cars. For those who meet the conditions, it can be a solution. But experts tell NOS that the French approach is still insufficient.
For the third year in a row, the French government is making 50,000 electric cars available for the social lease program. For about 140 to 200 euros per month, people can rent an electric car for a minimum of three years.
Conditions
Those who want to participate must meet several conditions: for example, the income must not be too high and the distance between home and work must be more than 10 kilometers, or someone must drive at least 8,000 business kilometers annually.
Dolorès Magalhães has been driving a bright red electric Fiat since January this year. From her hometown Rosières-en-Santèrre, she has to travel dozens of kilometers daily to her job at an insurance company. "If I had to lease a car myself, I would have had to put in 8,000 euros for the same car and pay 300 euros every month. Enormous, that would have been impossible for me."
Immediate benefits
"Usually, investments in the energy transition first cost a lot of money, while the benefits come later," says economist Stanislas Jourdan, from think tank Sustainable Finance Lab in Utrecht. "What I find interesting about social leasing is that it reverses the financial dynamic; the households that benefit pay a low monthly contribution and immediately have the advantages of an electric car that consumes less."
France is the first country in Europe with such a program. "It is one of the few environmental measures that really received a lot of support. At the launch in 2024, it was a great success," says Jourdan. "It was even a surprise for the government that so many applications came in."
But it is far from enough, says economist Jean Pisani-Ferry, working at top university Sciences Po. "If you consider that there are 40 million cars in France, at this pace we will not achieve the transition we want. Ten times as much needs to happen to truly move away from an economy based on fossil fuels."
That also applies to the rest of Europe, write researchers from the German Öko-Institut in a report on the possibilities of social leasing. "Due to the high price of electric cars, a large part of the population will have difficulty affording an electric car in 2030 and 2035," they write. "This especially applies to households in the lowest income group."
High fuel prices
Pisani-Ferry, specialized in European economy and the economic consequences of climate change, was closely involved in the founding of the Paris Climate School, which is fully dedicated to the social sciences of the ecological transition and climate change.
According to him, the current oil crisis is an important sign to act quickly. "We initially thought this crisis would be short-lived," he says. "But in reality, it continues: the oil price has been above 100 dollars per barrel since February. So it is not something temporary, but something that will really last a long time."
While fuel prices in France are also reaching record highs, the French government is under pressure to lower prices at the pump through subsidies. "But if we do that, we stimulate the use of fossil fuels," says Pisani-Ferry. "And that slows down the energy transition."
Jourdan agrees. "If governments hand out subsidies to lower the oil price or other energy prices, it is a band-aid. The problem is that in the long term you remain dependent on fossil fuels. And thus you do not help people at all to adapt to climate change and the energy transition."
Magalhães also notices how big that difference is. "Every time I pass a gas station, I wonder how I could ever have afforded that," she says. "I notice that people around me no longer just get in the car to drive, for example, 50 kilometers to the city."