nitially driven by car manufacturers, national governments and the European Commission now legitimate the role of CAVs in future "sustainable" mobility systems, as they are supposed to solve the problems we currently face: congestion, accidents, etc. (European Commission, 2020). In recent years, the positivist approach to "green" digital technologies as a response to current social and environmental problems has been questioned (Abrassart et al., 2020). However, the French government has recently reaffirmed its support for the development of this technology through the publication of a national strategy for 2023-2025 and fundings for CAV-based services’ trials and first deployments. This communication therefore aims to question the construction processes of the autonomous vehicle as a response to the social and environmental challenges of mobility in France through the following research questions: how did the autonomous vehicle emerge in France as a solution for social and environmental issues? How are the social and environmental dimensions of CAVs addressed in the test-beds programs? This communication builds on Science and Technologies (STS) concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to analyze the discourses and policies of CAVs in France. Through the example of a French national CAV trials program, this research will illustrate the existing tension behind the “digital technology as a tool for sustainability” discourse. First, I mobilize a corpus of newspapers articles, national strategies and 25 interviews with stakeholders involved in the trials program to analyze how car manufacturers and public transport operators worked together to build sociotechnical imaginaries of “desirable and sustainable” futures based on automation, that are not yet consolidated. Second, this paper explores the tension between the concept of sustainability promoted by public authorities that focuses on shared uses of vehicles, and the technological automated system (vehicle, infrastructure, supervision, connectivity) whose environmental, work-related impacts and ethics are not questioned yet in the trials.