Martin Lange // Photo credit: THOMAS SAMSON / AFP 3:23 p.m., January 22, 2024

Nearly 90,000 people have asked to benefit from social leasing, this rental with purchase option offered to the most modest households and traveling more than 8,000 kilometers per year.

It’s a real hit for these subsidized vehicles.

This Monday morning in Joinville-le-Pont, in Val-de-Marne, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu symbolically handed over the keys to one of the very first vehicles in the social leasing system.

The lucky one is called Reem.

She is a physiotherapist student, but also an employee.

Her job is 20 kilometers from home and she earns less than 15,400 euros per year.

It therefore fits perfectly into the criteria of this social leasing.

1,300,000 connections to the site

This young woman is now the owner of a blue Peugeot e-208, a new vehicle which will allow her to save money.

"I know that already, just the cost of the rent, it comes back to me less than what I spent on gasoline for my thermal vehicle. I needed to change car too, so it fell a bit to the good time. Obviously, we can be careful about what we do, especially for the future, it's up to us, the new generation, to be careful," explains the physiotherapist student.

This new system is a hit with more than 1,300,000 connections on the monleasing.electrique.gouv.fr site and already more than 35,000 files submitted to dealerships.

This is much more than the 25,000 cars initially promised.

But the Minister of Ecological Transition assures that negotiations have already been launched to increase the scope.

Discussions with dealers to increase the number of cars

“This volume of 25,000 was not determined by the government taking into account a maximum budget. It was determined taking into account the availability of vehicles. Given the success, we are discussing with the dealers to find out if we can go beyond these 25,000 vehicles. And we are in the process of consolidating what the possibilities would be,” explains Christophe Béchu.

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Stellantis, present this Tuesday morning and which had initially promised 20,000 cars, assured that it would be able to offer twice as many.

40,000 electric vehicles, therefore, still with this promise, less than 100 euros per month.