What is social leasing?
Social leasing here refers to a form of support for the purchase or lease of electric vehicles targeted at households that are in a situation of transport vulnerability (here low and middle income adults, car dependent in a rural area). The measure is based on a subsidy designed to make EV accessible at a moderate rental price.
This support is intended to be time-limited to address the challenges in the early phase of the electrification of the car fleet (higher upfront prices and low availability on the second hand market). It could be supported at European level, but initiated and implemented in a way that is specific and adapted to the context and social needs of each country.
Social leasing is identified as an effective scheme to address the social barrier in the EV transition amongst the vulnerable transport groups. It will be complementary to other measures expected from national governments through active mobility options, public transport, car sharing schemes, scrappage programmes or charging infrastructure support.
The French initiative
Initiated in France in 2023, social leasing provided electric vehicles from €100 per month for middle- and low income households and has been a great success (90,000 applications in one and half months, despite many industrial stakeholders and policy makers declaring that there would be little interest in the scheme).
Europeans citizens want affordable and efficient electric cars
A 2023 YouGov survey commissioned by T&E in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and the UK found that there is high demand for affordable €25k BEVs. If the survey results were replicated in the car market, the advent of affordable small BEVs would bring the sales share of fully electric cars from 25% to 35%. The increase due to the availability of small EVs would result in an additional 1 million electric cars being sold annually, replacing combustion equivalents.
