France to spend €2.5 billion to jump start EV deployment

The French government has announced a ten-year, €2.5 billion program to jump-start vehicle electrification in the country. Energy minister Jean-Louis Borloo said that the money would be disbursed for incentives for the production and purchase of plug-in vehicles as well as upgrading infrastructure. The hope is to have one million charging points in place by mid-decade and four million by 2020.

About half of the charge stations are planned to go into private homes with most of the rest going to offices and businesses to provide employees with charging ability to during working hours. Only about 75,000 charge points are planned for public locations which seems to low.

Borloo expects EVs to account for about 16 percent of new car sales in France by the end of the decade, rising to 27 percent by 2025. Some of the funding would also be used for incentives to build advanced batteries, with Nissan already having announced plans to build a factory for its AESC joint venture in the next few years.

[Source: Reuters]