Germany reopened its state purchase premium for electric cars on 19 May 2026. Eleven weeks later, the party that co-governs the country wants it rewritten.
On 6 August 2026, Alexander Hoffmann, the CSU's parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, called for the premium to be restructured so that the value creation it subsidises happens primarily in Europe. His complaint is specific: as the scheme stands, he argues, it is largely non-European producers that benefit from German taxpayers' money.
What triggered it
The figures behind the demand come from the environment ministry's response to a parliamentary question. That data shows the premium flowing disproportionately to Tesla, Skoda and Renault. German manufacturers grew their electric sales by 31% under the scheme, but their share of the market fell to 53.9%, while foreign brands including Tesla came close to doubling their sales.
The scheme itself is not short of takers. By 5 August 2026, the administering agency had received 103,500 applications since the scheme opened — a pace that has already shown up in the registration data, with Germany's BEV share reaching 29.3% in July. TeslAnt reported the earlier signal in July, when Tesla topped the approved-application table in the scheme's first weeks.
What is actually being proposed
Hoffmann has floated local-content requirements — conditions that tie eligibility or bonus size to where a car and its components are made. He points to other EU member states that already link purchase bonuses to criteria such as local battery manufacturing, material sourcing and transport distance.
Bavarian premier Markus Söder, speaking in an ARD summer interview, said the coalition had agreed to review and adjust the subsidy in the autumn, extending it to used cars, so that German manufacturers benefit considerably more.
That is where the confirmed part ends. No draft text exists, no criteria have been set, and no vote has been scheduled. A coalition agreement to review a scheme in the autumn is not a decision to rewrite it.
The awkward European arithmetic
There is a problem with the framing that is worth stating plainly. The three brands named in the ministry data are Tesla, Skoda and Renault. Skoda is Czech and part of Volkswagen Group; Renault is French. Two of the three headline beneficiaries are European manufacturers — so a rule written around European value creation would not touch them, and a rule written to help German manufacturers is a different rule with a different legal problem inside the single market.
Tesla complicates it further. The Model Y sold across Europe is built at Grünheide in Brandenburg, roughly 60 kilometres from the Bundestag. A local-content test keyed to European assembly would capture Tesla's European volume rather than exclude it. A test keyed to battery cell origin would catch a great many cars, several of them German.
What buyers should do
Nothing yet. The premium is open, funded and paying out, and the review is months away. Anyone weighing a purchase this autumn should watch for draft criteria rather than headlines — the difference between an assembly-location rule and a battery-origin rule decides whether a Grünheide-built Model Y qualifies, and that detail does not exist yet.