Fuel at 2 euros: electric cars are flying off the forecourts, but not for everyone

According to Libération, which cites figures published this Sunday, 1 November, sales of electric cars peaked again in October. The reason given: pump prices that comfortably exceed 2 euros a litre. French people, the paper writes, continue to turn to electric. Beyond that, we don't yet know: the report says nothing about which households are buying, at what price, or with what subsidies.

So let's start with the question the headline sidesteps. Who is buying? A new electric car remains an investment. The person who drives 40 kilometres to work in an old saloon does not necessarily have 25,000 euros to spare, nor a garage with a charging point. What our reading suggests, and not a fact established by these figures: the pump price works like a tax, and the switch to electric like a premium subscription. Well-off households dodge the tax by changing car. Everyone else pays it by carrying on driving.

This is where the old concept of the metabolic rift becomes useful, without the jargon. For Marx, capitalism creates an imbalance between society and nature: it always needs more energy and matter, and the bill is passed on to ecosystems and to the poorest, who have contributed least to emissions. Here, the rift takes the form of an 80-euro fill-up. The fuel market is volatile, the shareholders of the oil groups are, in the spirit of official communication, nowhere to be seen, and it is the suburban employee who takes the hit.

The electric car does not abolish the problem either. It shifts the question to extraction: lithium, nickel, cobalt, with their mines and their relations of domination. Replacing a private combustion fleet with a private electric one means changing the engine without changing the system. The debate should be about what we produce in order to move around, not just about what we put in the tank.

We already hear the familiar tune: the French are "making an effort", households are "adapting". Yet emissions have owners, and they are rarely the people counting their centimes at the roundabout. Pitting the diesel driver against the electric driver is also an old trick: divide those who suffer the same constraint, so no one looks at who sets the prices and who pockets the margin.

What would a serious policy look like? Public planning: free or nearly free public transport, regional trains that genuinely serve their areas, electrification of company fleets, social car-leasing schemes, and funding drawn from fossil profits rather than from an eco-bonus that the best-off capture first. The market, meanwhile, is making its transition at the speed of the wallet. October's figures show that demand exists. They do not show who is being left by the roadside. That is precisely what will need to be counted.