The end of private cars?

We know that soon, in 2035, internal combustion cars will no longer be on the market, so we'll have to switch to electric cars. French manufacturers have even put this deadline forward to 2030! The effect of this ban will surely be to push many people to buy vehicles manufactured in low-cost countries rather than in Europe or the USA. It's a rather strange consequence, given that the stated aim was to do something about the climate, and importing such large items is not good for the climate, especially if it concerns the majority of the fleet (excluding luxury cars). But we will see in the rest of this article that this will not be the case. Low-cost countries have already understood and taken on board the situation, and against all the odds they are offering slightly cheaper mid-range and even top-of-the-range vehicles, but providing no solution for households on a limited budget.

The first astonishing thing we've all surely noticed is that we won't have enough metal and electricity to equip and run the whole fleet. According to Aurore Stephant, we would have to multiply wind and photovoltaic production by a factor of 3 and extract as much metal as has been extracted since antiquity in order to be ready in 2040. As for lithium alone, we need to increase mining by a factor of 21 between now and 2050. It takes 2 million litres of water to extract 1 tonne of lithium. An electric car battery will require the processing of an average of 21 tonnes of material, given the concentration of lithium in current mines. The crushed and moved earth contains large quantities of heavy metals and arsenic, so a great deal of permanent pollution of the land is to be expected. Given that a new mine takes 10 years to come on stream and that extraction has already increased exponentially since the 50s. 80% of cobalt is mined in the Congo, the fourth poorest country in the world, which uses child labour. Rare earths are 80% produced in China. This point alone shows that this is not possible, and that we are already at the maximum of what we can produce.

As far as electricity is concerned, last winter we saw calls for sobriety because we risked not having enough. What will happen when all or most of our power plants are electric? In France, no fewer than 10 additional power stations will have to be built. And here again, it takes about ten years to build a power station. Around the world, 63% of electric cars are recharged by hydrocarbon-based electricity, so this mode of transport is nowhere near as environmentally friendly as we are being sold. It just shifts the pollution from the cities to their outskirts.

You will also have noticed that the price of new cars has risen significantly, as with the Peugeot 2008, the Dacia Spring and the Tesla Model 3. If we take the Spring as an example, it came out with an advertised price of €16,990, which made it a reasonable alternative, especially compared with the competition, but it's now €19,800! And this inflation is not limited to France. A survey by the ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club) found a general rise in new car prices in 2022 compared with 2017, of up to 44% in some cases! Dacia being the most reasonable example. If we compare electric cars with internal combustion engines: a Zoé costs €35,000 and the internal combustion equivalent, a petrol Clio, is €17,000 - electric cars are 100% more expensive. You might think that the price would come down as more cars are sold, but the cost of the battery accounts for 25 to 40% of the price of an electric car, and not only will batteries not become any cheaper, but with growing demand they are likely to increase sharply. At best, the price of our Zoé will fall by €5,000 to €30,000, a maximum 14% drop. In fact, the price of the Zoé has risen by 9% in the space of a year. The new Renault 5 electric car, expected to be more affordable, has ended up costing over €30,000!

This price inflation can be explained by the effects of inflation, the COVID crisis, the shortage of electronic components, the fall in the value of certain currencies, rising transport costs, the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the upmarket positioning of many manufacturers. Selling low-margin vehicles means selling a lot of them and being at the mercy of crises or models that don't sell. The top end of the range, on the other hand, offers comfortable margins and is virtually unaffected by crises. In France, for example, Stellantis and Renault have decided to move significantly upmarket, and this has enabled them to increase their profits. This was evident when Renault presented its Renaulution strategic plan. This repositioning has had a highly beneficial effect for them, with average profit margins of 8.5%, an all-time record.

The price of recharging is also set to soar, as it is linked to the price of electricity, which is skyrocketing. The price per kilowatt/hour of Tesla's super-chargers has tripled. A 100km charge for a Zoé costs 15 euros, compared with 12 for a petrol Clio. When the government stops making money from taxes on petroleum products, it will be tempted to put the same level of tax on electric recharging, perhaps not at home but at the recharging stations at least. Doing kilometres in an electric car will then cost twice as much as with petrol!

A point of detail, some would say, is that cars have not stopped gaining weight over the last 10 years. Mainly because of the additional equipment made necessary by European regulations and the gadgets added by manufacturers for competitive and marketing reasons, and the success of SUVs. It's obviously important to talk about this because a heavy car consumes more fuel, wears out more brakes and wears out more tyres. And yet the main source of micro-particle pollution from combustion-powered cars these days is produced by tyres and brakes. But electric vehicles are considerably heavier than combustion engines: between 100kg and 700kg heavier. That's a lot of weight, and a big battery means a lot of micro-particle pollution. So it's clear that long-range vehicles, which are often very popular with drivers, are an economic, electrical, ecological, social and moral (cobalt) aberration, and a health disaster...

A social crisis on the horizon? While 5 people are needed to manufacture a combustion engine car, only 3 are needed for an electric car. A large number of workers will therefore find themselves out of a job, and although the electric car will make it possible to take on a few extra people in research and development, it won't be these workers, and not nearly as many as the jobs that will be lost. This is one of the reasons for the strikes that are shaking the United States, with 150,000 people at risk of stopping work, and for Biden's increasingly generous subsidies to prevent factory closures.

There are two additional points to note:

• There are more and more roadworthiness tests, which means that many cars that are still roadworthy are being scrapped.

• As poverty increases in French households, more and more people are unable to buy a new car, or even a second-hand one. More and more households are falling back on models that are more than 15 years old. In 2022, there were months when more second-hand cars were sold than new cars!

• China has every intention of invading Europe and the rest of the world with slightly cheaper but over-equipped cars. As the main supplier of rare earths and batteries, with cheap labour, times are going to be tough for Western manufacturers. 75% of the best-selling cars in France are not made in France. 62% of China's electricity is coal-based. Building a vehicle in China emits 10 tonnes of CO2 and 7 kg of NOx. Transporting the car from China produces 30 tonnes of CO2 and 1600 kg of NOx. A new vehicle manufactured in China and transported to France therefore produces a total of 40 tonnes of CO2 and 1607 kg of NOx. We're going to have to keep this vehicle for a very long time before we win on emissions!

• Knowing that clean cars have been subsidised to the tune of €1.4 billion in 2022 in France, it's clear what a waste of money, industry and harmful gas emissions this is. The advantages of Chinese vehicles will not necessarily help low-income households, because the Chinese advantage will not be in price but in equipment: for the same price, we will have more equipment. The Europe of technocrats has succeeded in destroying European car manufacturers for the benefit of the Chinese.

• This situation seemed temporary, but we are obliged to note that it is lasting in terms of inflation, war, electronic components, currencies, and the Chinese economic crisis, which is making China aggressive commercially. Household poverty is likely to accelerate.

To sum up, the switch to all-electric seems impossible given the resources required, and prices have rocketed and will continue to do so. Second-hand cars are becoming rarer and rarer, while at the same time being in demand. The implacable consequence is that most people will no longer have access to a private car because it will have become too expensive. As Luca de Meo confirms: "We have to accept the idea that private mobility, as we know it today, will no longer exist".

It will make a few countries and companies richer, it will lead to the exploitation of even more children, it will not have such a marvellous ecological effect as we are being sold, it will pollute unbelievable quantities of water, it will displace unbelievable quantities of polluted land and it will de facto exclude millions of French people from an essential mode of transport outside the big cities.

One question remains: without getting into conspiracy theories, is this something organised at global level? Or is it a direct consequence of measures taken by incompetent people with their fingers in the pie, as is so often the case, alas? I obviously don't have the answers to these questions, and I'll leave you to discuss them in the comments.