Will Macron have to help the French auto industry? Le Monde Report
In France, the auto industry asks Emmanuel Macron for help in the face of a "devastating" energy transition. The Le Monde article
The French automotive industry chain – writes Le Monde – asks for 17.5 billion euros for state support to accompany the gradual disappearance of the combustion engine without social disruptions.
The President of the Republic is expected to receive, on Monday 12 July, a particularly worried automobile industry at the Elysée. Emmanuel Macron is expected to take stock of the situation in the sector one year after the implementation of the bailout plan in the summer of 2020 and above all in view of the European Commission's “Green Deal” arbitrations, scheduled for Wednesday 14 July. Everyone expects radical decisions: drastic reduction of CO2 emissions from the car and a ban on the combustion engine by 2035.
“This acceleration will have devastating consequences,” warns Luc Chatel, president of Plateforme filière automobile (PFA), the public body representing the sector and its 400,000 jobs in France. "If we add to this the future Euro 7 standard in preparation, which promises to be very strict, and the local banning decisions, such as the end of diesel in 2024 in Paris, we find ourselves with the obligation to move very quickly towards a single technological solution which is the battery electric car. In other words, the Commission throws away a hundred years of European know-how and instead chooses a technology in which the Chinese are ten years ahead of us ”.
Mr. Chatel, with a delegation of some of the leading leaders and trade unionists in the sector, will therefore plead the cause of a century-old industry involved in an unprecedented whirlwind of transformations. "There are two scenarios: that of decline, with the risk of seeing 100,000 jobs disappear by 2035, but also that of recovery, which implies strong support from the state that we estimate at 17.5 billion over the next four years" .
To “make the electric battery a success,” the PFA believes that public authorities should start by accelerating – with a capital A – the implementation of public fast-charging stations. “At the end of March 2021, France only had 31,000. We should have 100,000 charging stations by the end of the year, ”notes Mr. Chatel,“ and we need 700,000 by 2030. There has been an effort, but we're still a long way off. We need a real change of pace, an 8.5 billion euro Marshall plan for terminals by 2025 ”.
The sector also wants to avoid a relegation of France to the second division of the zero-emission car industry. PFA believes that to maintain its position, France should be able to represent 20% of the European battery market, 25% of the hydrogen market and 25% of the power electronics market, which is a essential component of an electric car, by 2030. To support this ambition, the sector would need aid of 9 billion euros between now and 2025, of which 6.6 billion for the battery industry alone.
Reduce the competitiveness gap within the European Union
The other big demand from producers in the sector is a reduction in the competitiveness gap within the European Union. “In France, the cost of manufacturing a vehicle is 600 euros higher than in Eastern Europe and 300 euros higher than in Southern Europe,” explains Luc Chatel. The PFA is also asking French SMEs for help with their robotization, which is far behind the equivalent industrialized countries (including China), as well as an increase in the social fund to support these changes, which currently has 50 million euros.
Alongside Mr. Chatel and the industry contractors, the workers' representatives will bring their claims. “If the end of thermal energy is announced for 2035, we will acknowledge it,” says Valentin Rodriguez, federal secretary of the FO-Metals federation, “but it must be done without social disruption and with a good level of aid for the transition. The issue for the unions will be above all the French location of the production of electric cars and their components. On this point, producers must also change their program ”, notes Mr. Rodriguez. It would be useful to create or relaunch the Made in France brand.
On this “made in France” issue, the question of the future of rechargeable hybrid cars, equipped with an internal combustion engine that should be banned, will probably be a hot topic. “Many of them come out of French factories,” says Luc Chatel. On the other hand, advocates of a rapid transition believe it would be a strategic mistake to cling to it. “Hybrids don't meet climate goals,” says Diane Strauss, director for France of the NGO Transport & Environment. "To be competitive and achieve price parity between combustion and electric cars in 2026, manufacturers need to focus on 100% electric."
(Extract from the Epr press review)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/industria-auto-macron-soccorso-transizione-energetica/ on Sat, 17 Jul 2021 06:09:54 +0000.