Automotive. Cars destined for scrapping soon to be rented at low prices to the most precarious

This is rare enough to be underlined: after the senators, the deputies adopted a bill unanimously during the night from Wednesday to Thursday. The text, initiated by Les Écologues, aims to promote the reuse of cars destined for destruction, to benefit the most modest. Concretely, the least polluting vehicles resulting from the conversion bonus will soon be able to be rented for a modest sum to those who need them the most, particularly in the countryside.

This “solidarity rental” system aims to correct a deleterious effect of the conversion bonus (PAC). This government assistance partly finances the purchase of a clean vehicle in exchange for the scrapping of an old vehicle. Except that among the cars sent to the scrapyard, tens of thousands are in good condition and less polluting than part of the current vehicle fleet. In 2022 alone, 59% of vehicles destroyed under the CAP were classified Crit’Air 3 (i.e. around 54,000 vehicles).

Rely on solidarity garages

The environmentalist senators therefore had the idea of ​​giving them a second life and helping precarious households benefit from them. Their bill allows voluntary mobility organizing authorities (AOM) – local authorities – to become free owners of the least polluting vehicles resulting from the conversion bonus. It is then up to these AOMs to set up a low-cost rental system, particularly through solidarity garages.

These associative structures – there are around 120 in France – repair, sell and rent cars at low cost to the most vulnerable. They operate mainly thanks to donations, which have dried up since the creation of the conversion bonus. Reassigning cars destined for destruction to these solidarity garages is therefore a “common sense” measure, for the MP (ecologist) for Drôme Marie Pochonrapporteur of the text to the Assembly.

For whom and for how long?

Not all vehicles can be reused. Only those in good working order, gasoline and classified at worst Crit’Air 3 or retrofitted (heat engine transformed into an electric or hydrogen engine) can be recovered. They will not be sold, but rented for a period of one to three years, “so that they do not get lost in nature, otherwise the environmental objective of the conversation bonus would fall by the wayside”, explains Marie Pochon.

Who will be able to benefit from this “solidarity rental”? “It is the associative garages which will define the eligibility criteria,” replies the MP. She hopes that the system will make it possible to develop these structures, “in danger”, throughout the territory. And Marie Pochon is banking on “20,000 to 30,000 additional cars” available for rental at low prices per year.

According to Barometer of everyday mobility, 13.3 million people are in a precarious situation in terms of mobility. It is a safe bet that this type of public, rather rural and isolated, will be interested in this initiative, which complements the social leasing launched this year. It remains to be seen whether she will also be a victim of her success.