France is the only EU market that gates its electric car subsidy on a manufacturing carbon score rather than on price and emissions alone. The 2027 draft budget, presented on 1 October 2026, would add a second question to that score: not just how much carbon went into building and shipping the car, but which country the battery supply chain runs through.
What Article 28 does
Article 28 of the Projet de loi de finances pour 2027 transposes the EU's Net-Zero Industry Act, which requires member states to attach a resilience criterion to purchase subsidies for certain strategic technologies. Batteries are one of them.
The environmental score conditioning access to French purchase aid would then no longer rest on the carbon footprint of manufacture and transport alone: products from a supply chain dominated by a single non-EU country could be treated less favourably. The statement of reasons puts the number behind it — China accounts for around 50% of European battery supply, which the government calls a dependency rather than a trade pattern.
The criteria themselves are not in the budget. They would be set later by decree, with no implementation date given.
| Eco-score today | What Article 28 would add | |
|---|---|---|
| What is measured | Carbon footprint of building the car and shipping it to France | Plus the origin of the battery supply chain |
| Pass mark | 60 points out of 80, compared within size categories | Unchanged in the draft |
| Set by | ADEME methodology, published as a list of qualifying versions | Criteria to be fixed by decree |
| Also used for | Purchase aid, and the company-fleet tax incentive | Same two levers |
Where this lands for Tesla
France already rewards European cells — a low-income household can reach up to €7,700 in combined aid in 2026 where the battery was made in Europe. Article 28 would move cell origin out of that top-up and into the eligibility score itself, which is a different kind of lever: a surbonus you miss still leaves you with a bonus, a score you fail leaves you with nothing.
That matters because Tesla's eligibility is already narrow. As TeslAnt set out when the ministry floated a third size category for the eco-score, the Shanghai-built Model 3 does not reach the minimum score at all, and the Model Y Performance and seven-seat versions sit above the €47,000 price cap. What qualifies is the Grünheide-built Model Y — assembled in Germany, but with a standard version running lithium-iron-phosphate cells, a chemistry Tesla has sourced in Europe from Chinese suppliers. Tesla does not publish cell sourcing by version, so where a given car would land under a criterion nobody has written yet is not knowable.
The direction is knowable. A rule that scores assembly location favours Tesla in France; a rule that scores cell origin does not automatically do the same.
The rest of the budget, for owners who already drive one
The home charging point tax credit, which ended on 1 January 2026, is not reinstated; the 5.5% reduced VAT and ADVENIR support both survive. Non-rechargeable hybrids emitting 125 g CO2/km or more lose their 100 kg weight-tax exemption from 1 January 2027, and the malus scales are unchanged.
One line reads oddly against the rest: tax-free employer reimbursement for fuel is set at up to €1,000 a year, while the ceiling covering electric charging and the sustainable mobility allowance is €600.
Nothing here is law
The budget now goes through roughly 70 days of parliamentary process, and the government does not have a majority. Every figure above is a draft the Assembly and Senate can amend, and the resilience criterion in particular is an empty frame until the decree fills it in.