France aims for 2 million EVs by 2020
October 1, 2009 by Matt Brogan
France hopes to have 2 million electric cars on the road by 2020, and its energy minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, will on Thursday launch a plan designed to ensure the necessary infrastructure is in place in time.
The French state will invest more than 1 billion euros, installing charging stations, adapting the electricity grid and buying vehicles, as well as providing subsidies to buyers and manufacturers, Paris Match reported on Wednesday.
The government wants to build up a network of 4.4 million charging points by 2020, or enough to support 2 million vehicles.
French industry minister Mr Christian Estrosi said public and private players would launch tenders for 50,000 electric vehicles during the autumn.
French manufacturers Renault and PSA Peugeot-Citroen are both launching electric cars, such as the Peugeot iOn (pictured) but their forecasts of the likely market for the vehicles differ.
Philippe Varin, CEO of PSA, which displayed the Peugeot iOn, based on partner Mitsubishi’s iMiEV, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, said earlier this month that he expected about 1 in 20 cars sold worldwide by 2020 to be electric.
Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, meanwhile, who is also CEO of Japanese alliance partner Nissan, is sticking by a forecast of 1 in 10 electric cars by 2020.
With Reuters
Print it: 
Big oil won’t like that. It won’t be long before BP/Shell start mining for lithium.
isn’t that a rebadged mitsubishi under that peugeot lion?
guess they’re doing more ‘work’ together (the Outlander / 4007 being the other one).
peugeot seem to be getting into bed with all the other manufacturers lately (BMW and Toyota). who’s next?
Looks like another French revolution !!
1. Batteries will become more efficient on the whole and their price will drop, whereas the oil will simply go up and up as it becomes more scarce. As simple as that.
2. The range of noticeable EVs are sufficient to meet the daily driving needs of more than 95% of drivers ((The vast majority of people (95%) drive less than 100/km a day, 82% of the respondents said they drive 40 miles or less a day, with an average daily driving distance of 27 miles.)).
3. I’m hopeful that the charge network will extend the select districts to nation-wide scale throughout the world, and this environment can usher in active private investings in EVs.
4. It is also in the best interest of electricity utilities that EVs are going mainstream, thereby they need to put in charge stands where needed around highways, major roads with card readers or cell phone tech.
5. The vehicle-to-grid communication technology is helping the battery serve as a storage to prevent the costly blackout standing at about $90 to 100bn per year. That means utilities are shedding cost for additional storage facilities and ratepayers are selling electricity during peak demand so that EVs can make more economic sense, as we know.
6. I remain confident that investing in charge stands could give rise to multiple times as much investing effect, so to speak, some billions of investing, this simple deployment, could call into the most-sought energy independence and solid recovery around the world.