the electric vehicle market | France

1.1 Definition and scope of the study

An electric vehicle is a vehicle powered by one or more electric motors. These are powered by a fuel cell, a storage battery or an internal combustion engine generator. There are cars that run solely on electric power, but there are also hybrid electric vehicles, which run partially on electric power.

The term "vehicle" encompasses several product categories, including electric and hybrid cars, electric two-wheelers (bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, etc.), electric buses and electric utility vehicles. In this study, we will focus on electric and hybrid cars.

The important elements that characterize an electric vehicle are the following

• Recharging that works with a cable through which alternating current flows
• The converter which transforms the alternating current of the network into direct current
• The battery that stores the current in several cells and redirects this same current to one or more electric motors
• The transmission: the electric gearbox has no gearbox because the electric motors are capable of turning up to several tens of thousands of revolutions per minute
• Regenerative braking: when an electric motor turns "in a vacuum", i.e. without being supplied with current (technically when you brake or no longer press the accelerator), it reproduces the current that it recovers.

It is partly thanks to these elements that technical breakdowns are often rarer in electric vehicles

The shift to electric cars is the global industry event of 2020: With nearly 1.4 million electric cars sold in 2020, or 8% of sales, the European market leads the world, and is expected to double to 15% by 2021. In second place is China with 1.3 million electric vehicles sold on its national market, followed by the United States with only 350,000.

France is also the second European country that puts the most rechargeable electric vehicles on the road each year in Europe, thanks to its manufacturers. This shows the will developed by the state system and by the national manufacturers, in order to set up a more ecological and therefore electric traffic.