Weight above half a tonne will be punished on a rising scale. Above two tonnes, the penalty will rise by €30 a kilo, adding about €1,200 to a Tesla X or €1,800 to a larger e-Mercedes SUV. That makes sense. Lithium, cobalt and steel do not grow on trees.
The French car lobby Mobilians is furious. “The whole sector is in a slump. Our production is the lowest since 1960, the plants have excess capacity and the market is more than 25pc below 2019 levels,” said Xavier Horent, its director-general.
“The country is drowning in a flood of social plans while the US and China leave us in the dust. Deficit spending is keeping the economy going without any structural reform. It is empty growth.”
Mr Horent said the buoyant CAC 40, the benchmark French stock index, hides “transferred risk” landing on smaller firms and contractors who are sinking into crisis and cannot save themselves by relocating abroad.
“The
modèle français is only protected against a massive devaluation by the euro. Bureaucracy is wasting away our talents and we are paralysed by outdated nostrums: protection instead of risk, pensions instead of work, waffle instead of action. They think they can conjure away the threat of bankruptcy with more taxes. The surfeit of regulations has become pathological,” he said.
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