Who blames the owners of electric cars? This is a question that haunts the manager of a car dealership, located near Balma in Toulouse.

During the night from Friday to Saturday, around 3 a.m., a commando broke into his establishment, before setting fire to three hybrid cars. “On the video surveillance, we see them throwing a burning engine under one of the three SUVs. The flames then spread to the other two 4X4s. The damage is colossal”, testifies, angrily, the manager of the structure. In the space of a few minutes, he lost nearly €120,000.
Before leaving the premises, the author(s) left a signature. A tag written in yellow on the bitumen: GJ vs ZFE. This message can be interpreted as follows: yellow vest against the low emission zone subject to the crit’air sticker.

These EPZs aim to gradually ban the most polluting vehicles. And this is not the first time that activists have organized malicious acts to protest against this device. Several charging stations for electric cars burned in Toulouse, including a boulevard in Switzerland, in early November.

On the night of Friday October 7 to 8, the cars of the green space maintenance department of the Toulouse town hall also caught fire. Upon their arrival, the elected officials had discovered an unequivocal message: “Nik la ZFE”.

Investigation entrusted to the departmental security

Following this series of facts, the Toulouse prosecutor’s office opened an investigation, designated to the national police. But to date, the author or authors are difficult to identify. “Contrary to what one might think, it is possible that the yellow vests have nothing to do with it. I think the far left may be involved,” says a police officer.

Some of these acts of vandalism have also been claimed on the Iaata platform, a website close to this political movement. “Since this summer, several recently deployed terminals have been destroyed in Toulouse, one of the test cities of the ZFE. We participated in this resistance. The ZFE is an ecological decoy and a social injustice”, can we read in an article published November 14.

Opponents of the ZFE are numerous in the department. Associations of motorcyclists and motorists in the Toulouse region have even created a collective: the Interclub ZFE 31. “It’s an endless headache! How are we going to force the population to change cars? And who will finance these car changes? It’s a gas plant. The public authorities must listen to us, “explains one of the members of the Interclub ZFE 31.

As a reminder, the ZFEs already concern 11 French agglomerations and must include 43 of them with at least 150,000 inhabitants by 2025.