Geosocial: allows to classify citizens along three positions or dimensions, social, geographical and revenues.
Electromobility mass market adoption is important in the West, while the Global South may very well delay it and prefer first to invest in biofuels. Those low-carbon fuels rely on existing agriculture and forestry sectors, existing fuel distribution networks, existing vehicles, thus keeping the multi-billion investments required for electromobility infrastructure (green electricity generation, grid connection, high voltage distribution, charging stations) for more urgent national priorities, in education and other basic services. A good example of this approach is Brazil, the green giant of South America, where biofuels have successfully de-fossilized transport for the last fifty years.
But, even in the more affluent West, switching to electric vehicles (EV) on a grand scale is not so obvious, despite the numerous calls from stakeholders calling for the de-fossilization of transport, like the International Energy Agency or the International Transport Forum. EVs are not yet on par with their equivalent thermal models, on purchase price. And possibly neither on total cost of operation, if recharge is not properly planned for to benefit from cheap electrons (at home or at the office, for instance: your neighbor may be more than happy to tell you the extortionary sum he or she had to pay on a private recharging station, off the road or on a parking lot).
Which is why geosocial aspects have to be considered in electromobility development strategies.
France Stratégie, the department in charge of prospective in the Prime Minister cabinet, has recently completed a social study about residential segregation, based on data collected nationwide over the last fifty years. Two urban areas are of particularly interest and focus, mid-size and large cities, excluding Paris, with downtown populations respectively in the ranges 200,000 to 700,000 inhabitants and over 700,000, which account for a large percentage of the French population, 20% each, in their so-called attraction zones. With the Greater Paris, we are talking of 60% of the French population, who can be considered urbanized.
Zooming down, the study shows the historical flight to the periphery, with now 55% of the population of the mid-size cities attraction zones, just short of being called rural, now living in exurbia, near-rural neighborhoods. Pushed by the increase of housing prices, this peripheral population has doubled in the last fifty years, an increase of 8 million persons altogether, when immediate suburbs (suburbia) saw a 50% increase and city centers remained more or less stable, in numbers, not in type.
The border between exurbia and truly rural areas is defined in the study by the percentage of the workforce having to commute to and from the center of the urban zone, set at 15 % minimum. 40 % of these daily commuters belong to the less qualified types of workers, which used to be described as “blue collars” and now mostly relate to tertiary jobs, in services. And are rather in employment, with lower access to home-working: formerly in city centers, they have left the zone to immigrants and marginal populations, something that also happened in the formerly industrialized zones of the U.S.
The consequence is obvious in terms of mobility. The further away from city centers, the lower the availability, density and frequency of public transport, the more driving remains the only possibility of mobility. Statistics are not available but, assuming both parents work in average families of 4, a rough calculation based on the data in the study shows that more than 1 million exurbanites may have to drive, half a million “blue collars”, only for the mid-size and large cities attraction zones. A figure likely to be more than doubled when integrating those in the Greater Paris that cannot benefit from public transport and those living in rural areas.
Broad brush, at least one to one and a half million cars, less than 5 % of the car pool, mostly internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), diesel powered today, for which serious subsidizing toward electromobility will be absolutely necessary, as these lower income households usually extend as much as possible the life of their cars, way past the average, and also heavily rely on the second-hand market: unlikely natural candidates for the switch from ICEV to EV, unless properly and seriously nudged.
As in the “social lease” approach earlier this year, which attracted 50 000 eligible motorists for small EVs, which 3-year lease costs 100 Euros per month, insurance excluded, supposed to be at parity with the average use of an ICEV. Public support has been announced at 13,000 Euros per vehicle. The minimum public effort to bring to electromobility those the most unlikely to purchase an EV, as described above, would then be south of 20 billion Euros, way above the yearly budgets extracted from cash-strapped finances.
And in any case, this public effort in favor of a minority would not solve the problem for the target majority of potential EV adopters, the middle-income households, for which the present incentive of 4,000 Euros does not seem that attractive for a frank enthusiasm to purchase an EV. Electromobility mass market adoption is a long way off in the future, despite the numerous calls in favor of this systemic change, reality checks bring painful awakenings, just wait and see what the next European Commission will say about the ICEV ban in 2035.
Philippe Marchand is a Bioenergy Steering Committee Member of the European Technology and Innovation Platform (ETIP).
