The end of the conversion bonus is a very good thing!

For the few people who are eligible, it’s not a disaster. And it has the benefit of making manufacturer offers clearer.

The Minister of Finance has decided to permanently end the conversion bonus starting January 1, 2025. This decision will not have major consequences on the French auto market because the eligibility conditions were quite strict.

Weakened year after year since the launch of the concept in 1995 by Édouard Balladur, it allowed recipients to receive between 1,500 and 5,000 euros when buying an electric car, provided they scrap a polluting model and met income conditions. Official figures are hard to obtain, but it seems that a little over 45,000 people benefited from it in 2024. A tiny minority of the new converts to electric mobility, and evidence of the limited importance of this scheme as it cost public finances “only” 150 million euros out of an overall budget of 1.5 billion euros allocated to the transition.

First and foremost, its disappearance is not a problem at all because it will be immediately offset by manufacturers. When you go to a dealership starting January 1, 2025, to buy a new vehicle, the salesperson will systematically offer you a trade-in deal for your old car instead of helping you calculate the amount of the conversion bonus. It’s up to you to be clever and visit several brands to find the one that is the most generous. In most cases, you’ll get more than the amount of the bonus! The real mystery is why the government intervened to substitute itself for manufacturers when it wasn’t necessary. Simply a waste of public money. Note that we do not place the ecological bonus on the same level, which is a real incentive to switch to 100% electric. If the latter were to disappear, the electric auto market would collapse, that’s for sure.

With the abolition of the Conversion Bonus, manufacturers will have to make efforts, or simply go back to doing their job as salespeople without assistance. But most importantly, they will have to stop lying to their customers! The famous advertisements for the new “thingy” starting at €14,999, subject to qualifying for the ecological bonus, the increased ecological bonus, and the conversion bonus — that’s over! Well, at least for the last condition. We are moving towards offers that reflect the real price of the car, and that is very good news when making a choice. In the end, the consumer wins.