France to ban petrol and diesel vehicles from 2040

The French Government announced today it would ban the sale of any new car with a petrol or diesel engine from 2040, just 23 years from now.

This news came just a day after Volvo announced it would electrify all of its new models from 2019 and Mercedes-Benz revealed it would start building battery-electric cars in partnership with Chinese carmaker BAIC from 2020.

Under new President, Emmanuel Macron, the French are apparently taking the emissions-limiting climate accords seriously, especially as they were actually signed in Paris.

Macron wants France to become carbon neutral, and while its reliance on nuclear power for 80 percent of domestic and industrial energy gives it a head start, reaching that goal means internal combustion engines will just have to go.

“We are announcing an end to the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040,” France’s Ecology Minister Nicolas Hulot said, calling the move a “veritable revolution”.

The French automotive brands have something of a running start to meet the law, with the Renault-Nissan alliance already the world’s largest maker of battery-electric cars and its latest acquisition, Mitsubishi, is a world leader in plug-in hybrids.

Of the roughly two million electric cars sold globally, the Renault-Nissan alliance accounts for nearly 450,000 of them. That said, pure BEVs accounted for just 0.6 percent of European new car registrations last year.

The European Environment Agency keeps records of vehicle emissions and confirmed Peugeot, Citroen and Renault ranked first, second and third out of all the continent’s large car makers.

PSA, which controls Peugeot and Citroen, has seen the European Union’s monopoly scrutinisers green light its takeover of rival Opel. PSA will deliver a new range of battery-electric and hybrid cars from 2019, based around an all-new architecture developed with 14-percent stakeholder, the Chinese car maker Dongfeng.

“The target is a tough one, but France wants to become the number one green economy,” Hulot insisted.

To reach that goal, France would have to overtake Norway, which claims the world's highest per-capita take-up rate of electric cars, naturally aided by healthy Government subsidies. Norway has set itself a target of permitting only battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars for sale by 2025, or just eight years from now.

The largely ceremonial Government upper house of France’s neighbour, Germany, has also pushed for an end to internal-combustion cars by 2030, as has pollution-blighted India. Neither of those suggestions has developed into binding laws, though.

The French statement said: “Our (car) makers have enough ideas in the drawer to nurture and bring about this promise, which is also a public health issue.” This suggests the Government isn’t making the move without the input of the French car industry, which includes Renault, Dacia, Peugeot, Citroen and DS.

Hulot, a long-term environmental campaigner, insisted that, besides climate change, one of the main reasons for the deadline was public health.

“It is a way to fight against air pollution.”