Having entered into force on March 1, this new regulation does not spare the most popular cars of the French.
If you plan to buy a new car during the year, know that it would have been better to order before the end of February. The application from the 1er March of the new scale of the Ecological Malus 2025 will increase the bill of many models and possibly that on which you are eyeing. The fault of a hardening of this tax which penalizes vehicles which reject the most carbon dioxide. In 2024, if your car issued less than 118 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer then it escaped the CO2 penalty. But in the new scale, applied for a few days, the threshold for the trigger for this penalty was lowered to 113 grams.
Result: a larger number of new cars will no longer cost the purchase, since the penalty is billed to the buyer during the first registration. According to a study carried out by AAA Data, relayed by the weekly Auto-Plus53 % of cars leaving the factory would now be affected by the CO2 penalty against 44 % last year. A significant increase that has repercussions on many models, including the most popular.
Take the example of the Renault Clio, the best -selling car in France in 2024. Its buyer had to pay an average of a tax of 42 euros last year. By applying the new grid, the penalty will amount to 103 euros, still according to the figures provided by AAA Data. The increase may be “only” of 61 euros on the total bill but it is an increase of 145%! And the star city car for the diamond brand is far from being the only one to pay the price for this stricter scale.
At Peugeot, the 208 sees its penalty increase by 171%, going on average from 34 to … 92 euros! Other very popular models of the French, mainly because they remain affordable, the Citroën C3 and the Dacia Sandero are not spared. The tax increases by 120 euros for the Petite Romanian and 173 for the city car at the Chevron brand. If we combine the “CO2 tax” and the penalty penalty – effective from 1,600 kilos for a thermal vehicle and 1,800 kilos on the rechargeable hybrids also targeted from the 1er January – 61% of new cars would be subject to a penalty in 2025. They were 45% last year.
Of course, some more polluting and heavier models are more penalized by this new version of the penalty. That of Alpine A110, for example, increases by 1,197 euros, to fix more than 4,400 euros. The tax of a BMW X5 literally explodes, going from 2,584 to 16,480 euros! The buyer of a new Porsche 911 will have to add 10,000 euros more penalty to him when making his check, which brings the prestigious sports car to 70,000 euros.
The fact remains that for the lambda motorist, the purchase of a new average range vehicle will return to him more in 2025, from several tens or even hundreds of euros. Unless it turns to electric-a motorization not subject to the penalty-but it is still necessary to have the means …