The government is going to introduce a "weight penalty" on the heaviest vehicles to combat the increase in the fleet and its environmental impact.
It was the Minister of Ecological Transition Barbara Pompili who announced this Thursday on Twitter.
"The weight penalty that we are introducing is a strong and necessary signal to better take into account the ecological footprint of the heaviest vehicles", she wrote, justifying the measure by this equation: "the heavier fleet automotive means more materials and energy consumed, more pollution, less available public space ”.
The increase in the vehicle fleet is more materials and energy consumed, more pollution, - available public space.
The weight penalty that we are introducing is a strong and necessary signal to better take into account the ecological footprint of the heaviest vehicles
- Barbara Pompili (@barbarapompili) October 15, 2020
This measure was among the proposals of the Citizen's Climate Convention, which recently considered that it had not been heard by the President of the Republic.
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In October 2019, two deputies, including a certain Barbara Pompili, and the former LREM Matthieu Orphelin, close to Nicolas Hulot, proposed an amendment to the Finance law for 2020, which consisted in further taxing SUVs by including in the calculation of the automobile penalty the weight of the vehicle and not just the CO2 emissions.
At the time, these small urban 4x4s represented 37% of car sales in France.
The amendment provided for increasing the tax by 15 euros / kg above 1300 kg for combustion vehicles and 1700 kg for electric vehicles.
The minister has already announced, in response to the reaction of a user on Twitter, that electric cars, heavier than others, would be exempt from this weight penalty and that an "adjustment" would be granted to large families, such as the Citizens' Convention asked.
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According to Les Echos, the penalty would apply to vehicles weighing 1,800 kilos and more.
