France's car industry signed a "pacte de confiance" on used electric vehicles with the government on Friday 4 September at Rambouillet. Signatories commit to displaying each car's State of Health (SOH) — the percentage of original battery capacity still available — in used-EV listings.
The signatories are Renault, Stellantis, Aramis Group, and the trade bodies PFA, Mobilisans and CSIAM. Monique Barbut, the ecological transition minister, convened the meeting and framed battery condition as "generally the most deterring factor" for used-EV buyers, calling the pact a gesture in favour of purchasing power.
It is a pledge, not a law
Several outlets have reported this as a new obligation, and that is worth correcting before it spreads. The pact is voluntary. Nobody is compelled to publish an SOH figure, there is no penalty for not doing so, and no compliance deadline was set — the signatories note most already display the data informally.
That matters because the two things it is easy to confuse with it are binding:
| Measure | Binding? | From |
|---|---|---|
| French "pacte de confiance" | No — voluntary pledge | 4 September 2026 |
| EU battery passport (QR code) | Yes | 18 February 2027 |
| Euro 7 environmental vehicle passport | Yes, new cars | November 2026 |
TeslAnt has covered the EU battery passport's February 2027 start and the Euro 7 passport arriving in November. The French pact adds nothing legally; what it adds is roughly eighteen months of head start at the dealers who signed it.
The number that already has teeth
France does have a hard SOH threshold in force, and it sits in the subsidy rules rather than in this pact. To qualify for the used-EV grant that began on 1 September, a car must show an SOH of at least 80%, or else retain at least 80% of its homologated range or at least 200 km of residual range. TeslAnt covered the 337-euro used-EV grant and its battery condition in August.
So a French buyer now meets battery health twice: as a subsidy gate that is enforceable, and as a listing figure that is not.
What it means for a used Tesla
Directly useful, with one caveat. Tesla is a heavy presence in the French used market — a five-year-old Model 3 has held value better than any of its nine closest rivals, as our look at French used-EV depreciation found — so more Model 3s and Model Ys will carry a stated SOH at Renault, Stellantis and Aramis outlets.
The caveat is the one nobody has fixed: there is still no standard test. SOH is measured differently by each manufacturer, and packs with a hidden buffer can report a healthier figure than the cells justify. A German court ruled in August that lost range on a used EV is not a legal defect, which is the other half of the same problem: a number with no agreed method behind it is hard to hold anyone to.
Until February 2027 puts a defined passport behind it, a displayed SOH is a useful signal — not a warranty.