“We will be the first country in Europe to stop innovating the subsidy strategy for new power vehicles, which is a small reaction that we want to take to the European level.” On May 12, French leader Macron announced a draft law enforcement aimed at improving French green property in the Elysee Palace.
Among them, the most interesting thing is that the French authorities have decided to greatly tighten the subsidy scale for new power vehicles. At present, any country and any manufacturer can lose the subsidy of 5,000 euros for bicycles in Paris. The only restriction is that the price of vehicles should not be higher than 47,000 euros.
According to Macron’s new law, the award of the subsidy of 5,000 euros will be directly related to the carbon dioxide emission during the labor of electric vehicles. What this seemingly “reasonable” new regulation conceals is Paris’ commercial harm strategy for China to make electric vehicles.
Although Macron has not yet promulgated the details of the new subsidy strategy, China, where coal-fired power generation still accounts for nearly 60% of the total electricity consumption, is undoubtedly not in line with the requirements. As for whether the power generation ratio has just reached 21% in previous years, it is estimated that the United States will also be eliminated. Considering that except for the European Union, where the low-carbon power generation rate has reached 60.3%, almost no large economy in the world can satisfy the low-carbon demand in the so-called automobile manufacturing process, it also symbolizes that the French New Deal has actually become a discriminatory business strategy for all non-EU automobile manufacturers.
In the first quarter of this year, with the help of generous subsidy strategy, the number of newly filed pure electric vehicles in France has reached 64,859, an increase of 49% year-on-year, and the infiltration rate of pure electric vehicles has reached 15.4%. If the plug-in hybrid vehicles with a year-on-year increase of 25% are included in the statistics, the infiltration rate of new power vehicles in France in the first quarter has reached 24.1%.
However, a quarter of these subsidized pure electric vehicles are imported from China, including Tesla Model Y, the second-ranked French/Romanian brand Dacia Spring, the fifth-ranked Tesla Model 3 and the seventh-ranked MG.
In March 2023, the sales list of pure electric vehicles in France. Source: insideEV
Earlier, the China Automobile Industry Association released data showing that the number of automobile enterprises in China reached 994,000 in the first quarter of this year, surpassing Germany and Japan to become the largest automobile importer in the world.
Macron himself didn’t hide the reality that the new bill pointed to as China, and told him on the same day: “We must never repeat the same fate of photovoltaic property”. At the beginning of this century, Europe once vigorously grew photovoltaic property, but after that, almost all photovoltaic property was moved to China for cost reasons. Macron’s performance: “This does not mean that we are business injudics. We will not open shopping malls, but we do not want to use French taxpayers’ money to accelerate the industrialization of Europe.”
In addition to tightening the subsidy for electric vehicles in France, Macron also hopes to implement this re-industrialization strategy at the EU level and show: “I don’t expect the EU to pass a bill to support any non-European-made power batteries, because Americans and China people don’t assist Europe in making power batteries.”
On the second day after the announcement of the new bill, Macron went to Dunkirk to observe the 5.2 billion euro battery name invested by Huineng Technology, a manufacturer of static lithium batteries in Taiwan Province, China. On May 15th, Macron met Musk again at the Elysee Palace. After the meeting, Musk himself showed that Tesla would stop investing heavily in France without going, but he had no choice but to give a specific timetable.
In the Paris garage in October last year, domestic brands including Volkswagen and Gallop were all absent, while BYD and Great Wall Motor added a lot of spirits and new models to the garage in the hope of entering Europe. At that time, Macron was telling us, “We must get drunk. The European Union is the best region in terms of meteorological damage, so the domestic automobile industry must be given priority. After all, China and the United States will do the same. What we need is the’ European Purchase Act’. “
What Macron refers to is the item about subsidies for new power vehicles in the American Inflation Reduction Act, which is also full of commercial injustices. Similar to the tightened subsidy rules in France, the American Inflation Reduction Act stipulates that new power vehicles sold in the United States can or may enjoy two credits at a cost of $3,750 each year. The prerequisite for paying the first tax credit is that 40% of the battery information of this model needs to be mined or processed in the United States or countries that have signed free commercial agreements with the United States, and this ratio will increase by 10% to 80% every year from 2024. The premise of choosing the second tax credit is that 50% of the battery components of new power vehicles should be produced in the United States, Mexico or Canada, and this ratio will also increase by 10% every year from 2024 until 100% of them are born in North America.
The result of the strict premise is that only one of the 17 new power models that meet the above definition is a non-American brand.
At present, the European Union is stopping talks with the United States on the raw material agreement on electric vehicles, so as to urge the electric vehicles in labor in the European Union to meet the subsidy request of the Inflation Reduction Act when they are imported into the United States. It will not eliminate the request for appropriate relaxation of American brands in the French New Power Vehicle Subsidy Charter that has not promulgated detailed rules after the conclusion of the agreement between the two major European and American economies, and the China brand may become the only beneficiary.
Macron’s new bill also lost the positive response of the French automobile industry at the first time. Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, the world’s fourth largest automobile group, made a false accusation about the flow of automobile property to the Far East at the forum in Bochum, Germany.