• Every Friday, 20 Minutes invites a personality to comment on a social phenomenon, in its appointment "20 Minutes with... ».
  • Make way this time for Aurélien Bigo, a researcher specializing in the energy transition of transport, who publishes Cars, next Thursday. A very didactic book about our car addiction and what it costs us.
  • What if the electric car was the solution? Not really. Aurélien Bigo invites us to get out of this idea that it is the magic answer and to rethink our mobilities more broadly.

Going to work, shopping, going on vacation, picking up the children from school, buying bread... Very often, the reflex is to grab the keys of his car and go, let's go. How has it become one of the central tools of our mobilities? And, above all, how to get out of this dependence, at a time when decarbonizing transport is becoming an emergency part of the energy transition?

The subject is sensitive, as the Yellow Vests movement has shown. In Cars (Tara Editions) to be published next Thursday, Aurélien Bigo, associate researcher at the Energy and Prosperity Chair, specialist in the energy transition of transport, poses all the issues. Not to mention that of the electric car, far from being the magic answer to everything. He answers 20 Minutes.


How is this era of hypermobility in which you say we are today?

Travel distances today are much higher than they were two centuries ago. On average, we always make three trips each day and spend about an hour there. But as we have multiplied our speed by ten, we have increased the distances traveled by the same amount. The French travel 26 km per day on average for their daily journeys, such as home-work. Adding the more occasional long-distance trips, we are well over 50 km covered per day. This is hypermobility: a clear broadening of our horizons made possible by an acceleration of motorized mobility over the last 70 years. From the plane to the TGV through the ships and the car.

Is it the latter who won the bet?

Very largely. It is used today for two-thirds of the trips we make. This is the central object of our mobility and everything was played out in the aftermath of the Second World War. We went from one car for 25 inhabitants in 1950 to one car for every two in 2000. Admittedly, it provides many advantages: door-to-door journeys, fast, convenient and flexible. But this car boom was also made possible by the rise in household living standards and access for a long time to abundant and cheap oil. Finally, our public policies have also contributed to this large-scale diffusion of the car. They are generally favourable to it, whether in terms of taxation, regulation, public aid to the automotive industry, but also infrastructure construction. We adapted the public space to the car. Without highways, there would necessarily be fewer long-distance journeys by car.

Do we pay dearly for this dependence on the car?

Yes, and we do not always have in mind the whole spectrum of these negative impacts. We often tend to boil everything down to the climate issue and the greenhouse gas emissions that cars emit. It is a central issue, but there are others. In particular, the extraction of resources and raw materials involved in their manufacture. The car also consumes a lot of space: 1.1 million km of roads crisscross the hexagon and we must add parking spaces. These spaces are taken from nature, with major impacts on biodiversity whose territories are thus trimmed and fragmented. This artificialization of soils also complicates adaptation to climate change. The dark surface of road infrastructure absorbs heat and accentuates the effects of urban heat islands.

The car is also a social issue. Owning one costs, on average, 4,000 euros per year. It is far from being accessible to all. In addition, there are the health impacts related to noise and air pollution or a sedentary lifestyle. Our lifestyles have often evacuated the physical efforts of our daily lives, so that travel time becomes an opportunity to do a little exercise. This is not the case if you take the car. Finally, we must not forget road accidents. If they have fallen significantly since the 1970s, they are still responsible for about 3,000 deaths per year in metropolitan France.

Can we say, with certainty, that electric is the future of the car?

In this context where climate change is the first challenge we face, then yes, electric is the future of the car. At least in countries where electricity production is largely decarbonized. Admittedly, the manufacture of an electric vehicle and its battery today emits more greenhouse gas emissions than that of a thermal car. On the other hand, on usage, the ratio is clearly reversed. Over its entire life cycle, the fifteen years that elapse between its manufacture and its scrapping, an electric car emits two to five times less emissions than the oil car.

That doesn't mean it's "zero emission," which is a misleading term we often hear. Above all, it does not mean, either, that it is the relevant answer to all issues. For example, the electric car consumes more mineral resources for its manufacture, contributes more strongly to the toxicity of water... It also still occupies as many spaces. Even on air pollution, it is only a partial answer. Thus, 59% of the fine particles emitted by a vehicle do not come from the exhaust, but from the abrasion of the brakes and the contact of the tires with the road. Whether the car is thermal or electric, it does not change much.



So we must not be satisfied with replacing our 38 million combustion vehicles with as many electric?

That would be the worst mistake. If electric is the future of the car, this is not the future of mobility. We must succeed in giving it back its rightful place, no longer making it the Swiss army knife of our mobility. This is the paradox: the car is designed to carry five people, can travel up to 180 km / h, displays several hundred km of autonomy ... But we use it most often for our daily journeys, which rarely exceed ten kilometers, which we do alone, at less than 80 km / h ... In the future, we will have to look very closely at our mobility needs. How long? How often? What load to carry? How many passengers? Then put in front a whole range of alternatives to the car. Finally, the choice is already important: on foot, by bike, by public transit, by train, by carpooling, by car sharing, not to mention intermediate vehicles, these modes of transport halfway between the bike and the car and which are beginning to emerge in France. Let's be clear: the car is not going away. But while it is used in two-thirds of our journeys today, we should increase this ratio to one-third.

Is progress being made in this direction?

There are some advances though. It would be an exaggeration to say that we are still in the politics of "all cars". An example: to get out of car dependence, a first challenge is to reduce distances. This includes better spatial planning that brings living places closer to those of work and consumption. The objective of zero net artificialization that the France has set itself [for 2050], goes in this direction by pushing much more reflection to give to the car. There are also these ongoing and future investments to develop cycling, rail, carpooling... But the amounts are still insufficient. Above all, at the same time, we are still France continuing to invest in the most polluting modes and to encourage hypermobility. There are always plans for airport extensions, road bypasses, new motorways... This overall coherence is still lacking in transport policies.

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