Photo: GUILLAUME BONTEMPS / CITY OF PARIS

Aside from the horrendous confusion skillfully maintained between the big Texas SUV and the city crossover — which is to today’s car what the station wagon or minivan was to yesterday — there’s clearly some common sense in this way of looking at things. Yes, multiplying 2.5 ton concrete blocks equipped with 100 kWh batteries into a range of 300 terminals with the wind at your back is nonsense. The problem is the big caricature that emerges from all of this: “If the entire world bought as many electric SUVs as the French, the mining industry would not produce enough critical metals by the end of the decade to meet global primary demand…” . Evil raw food, go! And the 3-ton-plus American pickups with 200kWh batteries invading the Los Angeles show this weekend, are we talking about that? As for today’s cars being heavier than yesterday’s, that’s true. But, let’s not forget, this is also the price to pay to achieve an infinitely higher level of security than in the past.

Another annoying thing is that to stop this shallot race, we always show speed: for the WWF, we have to strip EVs over 1.6 tonnes of bonuses and impose an overweight penalty on them. For others, a system should be created that would discourage people from buying a second family car. A kind of Chinese birth control, car version, shorter! In short, so many dead ends: no, not everyone will end up buying a small and unique city electric car to meet all their needs. And even more the French, who are many, for whom there is no alternative to “multimodal, based on joint soft mobility and without carbon emissions”. They won’t buy a big overpriced electric SUV, or a cheap plug-in hybrid (which WWF also condemns), or a new thermal (because they are condemned). In short, waiting for a technology that will satisfy everyone (if it exists), there is no miracle solution.

Read also:

• Electric cars: weight penalty soon?
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• Paris starts a war against SUVs: Parisians will have to vote