I am an electrical terminal and, in the last few days, I have taken a little shock which I did not expect. To avoid a blackout this winter, the manager of the electricity network recommends restricting my use to peak hours. Clearly, if you have an electric car, you will have to get out of the habit of plugging it in when you get home in the evening or when you arrive at the office in the morning.
>> Electric cars: why has the objective of 100,000 charging stations not been reached?
It’s not just in France where I find myself in the crosshairs. In California, where a heat wave is raging, the authorities ask citizens to avoid me because everywhere I start to weigh heavily on the electricity network. However, we are not as many as expected. My namesake Elisabeth Borne, who became Prime Minister, had pledged in 2019 that we would be 100,000 at the end of 2021. See, we are in September 2022 and we are only 69,000. That is also why the people say of me that I am the Achilles’ heel of electric cars: my deployment is done at a forced march.
Because I am expensive, very expensive: count 100,000 euros for a single fast terminal. They say that I am fast when I recharge your car in about twenty minutes, so count 60 euros for a full recharge. It’s much less, around 13 euros, if you recharge me at home.
In 90% of cases, I am used at home or at work. That’s why I weigh on the electricity network: with public terminals and private terminals, we are more than a million. Except that, between soaring electricity prices, the risk of shortages and criticism around the electric car “not so ecological as that”, I’m afraid that the current will no longer pass with the French. I even begin to wonder, I who was a symbol of the future, if I am not already part of the past.