Have you ever wanted a two-seater Tesla Model Y? No, not like a shooting brake (although how cool would that be)—but just a Model Y with the rear seats removed. It doesn’t matter, because Tesla knows that someone in France needs one, and that was all the motivation it needed to create exactly that.
Earlier this week, Tesla unveiled a two-seater Model Y exclusively for the French business market. And while it looks identical to the standard Model Y on the outside, it packs a huge trunk.
Quite literally, because everything past the front seats is storage space. Clement Maguet, a senior account specialist at Tesla, announced the product on LinkedIn. According to Maguet, the Model Y has 76 cubic feet (2,158 liters) of space, which is exactly the same amount as the standard two-row Model Y does when the second row of seats is folded down. Without folding seats, the Model Y has just 30.2 cubic feet of storage space.
Believe it or not, Tesla doesn’t actually build these cars like this from the factory. After building a standard or long-range car, the vehicle is handed over to a vehicle outfitting group called Gruau, which builds specialty vehicles that carry out tasks for medical transport, funerals, law enforcement, and food service. Maguet says that the Model Y can be configured for multiple rear shelf configurations like luggage covers, drawers, protective grilles, anchor points, and more.
For Tesla, this means taking advantage of yet another government subsidy loophole in the name of customers. France allows businesses to forego the local TVS tax on vehicles being used commercially as long as the vehicles meet specific criteria. One of those is the seating configuration, which is what Tesla is doing by equipping the Model Y with only two front-row seats.
Honestly, as polarizing as government subsidies are, I have to hand it to Tesla—that’s dedication. Tesla knows its markets and understands how to bend its products to meet local laws to gain additional market share. It did the same in Canada when it offered a Model 3 with just 94 miles of range, so it’s no surprise that the automaker also created this much simpler workaround exclusively for its business customers in France.
As of the time of writing, the vehicle isn’t available to order directly from Tesla’s French store. Tesla advertises this configuration as a business-to-business (fleet) purchase, which seems logical given Tesla’s intended purpose for the vehicle. Unfortunately, that means we have no idea how much it costs compared to a typical Model Y.
Tesla says that it plans on parading this vehicle around its various stores in France beginning this month and lasting until the summer.
