Thanks to the bonus of 100 euros, car sharing makes a place for itself in the day-to-day life of workers

“Daily carpooling”, on short trips, has attracted tens of thousands of followers thanks to the bonus offered since January to drivers newly registered on a platform, the Government announced on Tuesday.

In March, for the first time, carpooling platforms accounted for more than a million of these journeys of less than 80 kilometers, “double the number a year earlier”, the cabinet of the Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier- welcomed us. Runacher. In 2020, the government has set itself the goal of reaching 3 million daily trips.

“Good for the planet and purchasing power”

The Ministries of Ecological Transition, Energy Transition and Transport announced in December that motorists who start “daily carpooling” in 2023 could benefit from a bonus of 100 euros (25 euros from the first trip and an additional 75 euros if nine trips are made in the next three months). Since January, 80,000 new drivers have benefited from this bonus.

The operation is financed by the energy saving certificate system that obliges gas, electricity or fuel suppliers to finance energy saving actions under penalty of sanctions.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher’s cabinet sees it as a “very positive dynamic”, although the government would like carpooling, “good for the planet, good for purchasing power”, to become a “reflection of the French”.

100 million trips every day

After a first plan in 2019 and difficult years of covid-19 for carpooling, the government wants to give a push. It has set itself the goal of going from 900,000 short-distance car-sharing trips every day (an estimate that also includes informal car-sharing, without the intermediation of specialized platforms) to three million in a few years.

The objective being “very ambitious”, according to the office of the Delegate Minister of Transport Clément Beaune, a communication campaign was launched on Tuesday, in particular with radio spots, to encourage carpooling not only at the workplace, but also at the children’s school or the supermarket.

The government estimates that some 100 million car trips are made in France every day to go to work, school or to run errands. “The vast majority of these trips are made with only one person in the car,” says a ministerial source.