France Is Adding a Third Éco-Score Category, and the Model Y Lands in the Most Forgiving One

France's Ministry for Ecological Transition opened a public consultation on 17 September 2026 on a draft arrêté that would rewrite how electric cars are sorted for the environmental score — the éco-score that decides which models qualify for the bonus écologique. The consultation runs until 7 October 2026, and the text can be signed and published soon after.

What the draft changes

The éco-score does not measure tailpipe emissions. It scores the carbon footprint of building the car and shipping it to France, and a model needs at least 60 points out of 80 to qualify. Because a big car's footprint is naturally larger, vehicles are compared within size categories rather than against one number.

Today there are two categories; the draft adds a third for larger vehicles. According to Automobile Propre, which has read the draft, a car falls into the new top category if it meets any one of these:

The thresholds in carbon-equivalent terms move with it. Automobile Propre reports that the new top category inherits the current ceiling of 21,000 kg CO₂-eq, while the intermediate category is tightened to 19,300 kg CO₂-eq. The smallest category is unchanged. The ministry's stated reason is that two categories cannot fairly span everything from a city runabout to a large family car.

Where Tesla sits

A Model Y clears the new boot threshold several times over — its luggage volume is quoted above 800 litres with the underfloor compartment — and the Grande Autonomie versions clear the 550 km range criterion too. On the face of the draft, every Model Y sold in France lands in the third category and is judged against the most permissive of the three ceilings.

That matters because the Model Y is the Tesla the bonus actually reaches. The position today:

The bonus is worth €5,700 for households with a reference income up to €16,300 per share, €4,700 between €16,301 and €26,300, and €3,500 above that, plus a surbonus for European-made cells. The same ADEME score gates the purchase aid for electric taxis introduced in September, where the same single Tesla clears the bar.

So the "mauvaises surprises" in the French coverage are not aimed at Tesla. The squeeze falls on cars landing in the tightened middle band at 19,300 kg CO₂-eq — mid-size models that today clear a more generous ceiling. A Berlin-built Model Y, already inside the rules and now sorted into the loosest category, is among the likelier beneficiaries.

What this means for European buyers outside France

France is the only EU market that gates its purchase subsidy on a manufacturing-and-shipping carbon score rather than on price and emissions alone, so the détail of these categories is not just a French administrative matter. It is the working example of a policy instrument that favours a car built in Europe over an identical car built in Asia — the same principle, arrived at from a different direction, as the battery rules of origin that will expose EU-built EVs to a UK tariff from January 2027. For a Tesla buyer the consequence is already in the table above: where the car was assembled, not what it costs or how far it goes, separates an eligible Model Y from an ineligible Model 3.

The part nobody can check

One caveat runs through all of this, and it is structural rather than temporary. The State publishes only a list of qualifying versions on ADEME's score-environnemental-bonus.ademe.fr, refreshed monthly. It does not publish the score a model achieved or the carbon-equivalent figure behind it, so neither a buyer nor a journalist can tell how close a given car sits to its threshold, or what a 1,700 kg CO₂-eq tightening does to it.

Until the final text is signed, the category a version lands in is a reading of a draft, not a ruling. The published list is the only authoritative thing — and it only ever tells you the answer, never the working.