Spain’s Council of Ministers has approved the regulatory framework for Auto+, a new electric vehicle incentive scheme that will run nationwide through the rest of the decade. It replaces the previous system, MOVES III, with a centrally-managed grant processed through a single online platform and funded with a noticeably modest €400m (US$430m) applied retroactively to purchases made since 1 January.

The scheme is split into two pillars, one to serve private individuals and another for businesses, the self-employed and leasing arrangements of at least three years. Private buyers can receive up to €4,500 for a new or nearly-new passenger car, rising to €6,000 for the self-employed and micro-enterprises, and as high as €12,000 for businesses eligible under the Climate Social Fund. Light commercial vehicles, motorcycles, and quadricycles are covered under separate funding structures. 

As is typical of such incentive schemes, battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) are weighted more favourably than plug-in hybrids, and additional support goes to cars priced less than €35,000 and built in the EU—or at least using partly EU-made batteries. However, the fund drops MOVES III’s charging infrastructure support and scrappage bonuses. This may have been a necessity to prioritise funding for the main goal of adoption. 

The funds are noticeably modest for a scheme that is expected to run through 2030, particularly since retroactively valid claims prior to the start of 2026 are already accruing. Some local media reports estimate the €400m might run out as early as September.

However, the change that matters most is arguably administrative rather than financial. MOVES III’s core failure was never the size of its subsidy but the 12-24 month wait buyers had to endure for reimbursement. This delay priced out exactly the cost-sensitive, mass-market buyers the scheme was meant to reach. Auto+’s centralised processing is designed to cut that wait down to a matter of weeks, addressing the actual bottleneck rather than simply raising the amount of cash on offer.

Relative to its European peers on electrification, Spain has real ground to make up. BEVs account for roughly 10-11% of new Spanish car sales, better than the US but comfortably short of the EU’s June 2026 record of 23.6%. Shares of 25% and above are increasingly common in major car markets like Germany, France and the UK. Only Italy, at around 8.5%, performs comparably among Spain’s immediate peers. 

That gap in adoption reflects three compounding factors: lower average purchasing power relative to the high sticker prices of BEVs, the MOVES III reimbursement lag that Auto+ now targets directly, and a public charging network that remains thinner outside major highway corridors than in other European countries.

Set against its neighbours, Spain’s new incentive design lands in the middle of the pack rather than at either extreme. France’s Eco-score effectively excludes Chinese-built BEVs by scoring supply-chain emissions, layers subsidies by household income, and also backs a “social leasing” scheme to let low-income buyers access an EV for as little as €100 a month. Meanwhile, Germany’s restored purchase grants scale from €3,000-€6,000 by income and family size and pair with a decade-long road tax exemption. 

Auto+’s EU-content weighting sits closer to France’s approach than Germany’s or the UK’s, but it is a softer version: extra funding for EU-built cars and EU-sourced batteries rather than an outright exclusion of Chinese models, which remain eligible at a reduced tier rather than locked out entirely. This is likely no coincidence: Spain has actively positioned itself as a manufacturing foothold for Chinese automakers seeking to enter European markets, circumvent local tariffs, and safeguard themselves against upcoming ‘Made in Europe’ content requirements. 

Auto+’s real value may be in fixing the problem that was most directly suppressing Spanish demand, not closing the wider gap with Spain’s neighbours in a single move. The country should see its adoption curve steepen from a low base as the payment friction disappears, but closing the remaining distance to the EU average will take longer than fixing MOVES III’s bureaucracy did—assuming the fund even survives its own budget past September.