21 ms·

The electric car has dropped out of favor in Denmark

143 points by bipson 9y ago

awjr 9y ago
Taxing the purchase of a car seems non-sensical to me. It is not, so much, the ownership that is the problem, but the use of the car that creates congestion and health issues. Tax fuel and bring in road pricing.
- insertnickname 9y ago
  More than half of the price of gas in Denmark is taxes.
  - Tepix 9y ago
    Same in Germany, in 2014 it was 59%. In 25 of 28 EU states fuel was even more expensive than in Germany.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  > Tax fuel That accounts for fossil fuel cars but not electric ones. > bring in road pricing A fine idea except it's logistically difficult to implement tolls everywhere.
  - marak830 9y ago
    Well cars have odometers don't they, tax based on that.
    - squimmy 9y ago
      Are you suggesting the Danish should be taxed for travelling they might well have done in Sweden?
      - wodenokoto 9y ago
        "The Danes" or "the Danish citizen". "Danish" is an adjective or a cake.
      - TorKlingberg 9y ago
        If the car was registered in Sweden they'd be paying tax there. If the per-mile tax is similar and there are a similar number of Danes driving in Sweden and Swedes driving in Denmark it evens out.
    - gambiting 9y ago
      People do drive abroad you know. If I do most(or any percentage) of my miles abroad why would I pay tax on those miles where the car is registered? Meantime, I buy the fuel in those other countries, paying tax there. No idea how to solve that for electric vehicles. Presumably still at the point of charging.
      - awjr 9y ago
        The consensus is around some sort of road pricing either through ANPR cameras or telematic boxes. Fuel duty revenue in the UK is £28billion. That's a big hole to fill.
        gambiting 9y ago
        At the moment driving electric cars is so cheap because we buy electricity at domestic prices. It's as if we were buying utility oil(red diesel) for cars - then it would be stupidly cheap, no? There's a good reason it has been made illegal and you can't use heating oil for your car even though technically it would work just as well. I suspect that eventually you will be able to charge your electric car only from an approved charger that bills you a higher-rate car tariff, just like you can only use fuel sold at a petrol station in your car. As for the telematics - excuse me saying so, but the UK government can fuck off with suggesting even more surveillance, it's hard to fight off insurers installing telematics boxes as it is already.
        7952 9y ago
        I get the concern about surveillence. But I can see some amazing benefits of treating cars and the road as a single connected system. You could hold vehicles at the journey start point until space on the road opens up. Or adjust speed limits in real time depending on conditions. And maybe even remove traffic calming by modifying user speeds. The free-for-all we have now is hopelessly disfunctional and drivers suffer from that.
        gambiting 9y ago
    - mrweasel 9y ago
      Then you just create a different problem, or in case of Denmark, contribute to an existing one. You're going to make the poor worse of. Taxing on kilometers driven is unfairly hard towards those who cannot afford to live close to their place of employment. To the wealthy it won't matter much if you tax the purchase of the car or the kilometers driven. Those making below the average salary are normally excluded from living in the center of the cities, and is in some cases even forced outside the bus routes. Also Danish public transit is notoriously bad outside the four largest cities.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        How is it any worse than the current tax on gas, though?
        mrweasel 9y ago
        It's not, but it is different to taxing the sales price of a new car, which was how I understood the idea.
        eeZah7Ux 9y ago
        Taxing fuel it's better as it correlates quite well with engine size and usage and therefore pollution.
      - adrianN 9y ago
        I don't know how it in in Denmark, but wealthy people often live in nice houses in the suburbs and commute by car. Here in Berlin at least that is the case. The fuel taxes are offset by tax deductions for commuter miles though.
        mrweasel 9y ago
        Well that true in Denmark as well, but both the city centers and the suburbs are pretty expensive, so risk getting pushed past those, and then you start getting into areas where public transport is basically non-existing.
        9y ago
  - awjr 9y ago
    I suspect, requiring all cars to have a telematic device is the answer here. Insurance companies are already using these and the behaviour of individuals drastically improves when one is installed. This has an advantage in enabling provision of a device at country borders etc. Another option is to develop a cheap Automatic Number Plate Camera and create a network of cameras across our road systems. Both approaches not only allow road pricing strategies, but also address speeding. This may be a bit big brother for some but this is pretty much the way I see us heading.
    - Already__Taken 9y ago
      a complete big brother The future is going to be dreadful isn't it.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Blame the drivers. If most drivers weren't showing utter disregard to traffic laws pretty much all the time, there wouldn't be a dire need for ALPRs to curb speeding.
        fivestar 9y ago
        And if speed limits were set to what people really drive you would see a huge drop off in speeding! People ignore things that are increasingly obviously stupid. Any time a large majority of drivers are ignoring the rules it's an engineering problem, not a driver problem.
        TulliusCicero 9y ago
        I basically agree, the problem is that we tend to say, "we want to make this road safe by making it tolerant of faster driving" which basically translates to encouraging faster driving because drivers base their speed on what feels appropriate.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > People ignore things that are increasingly obviously stupid. Except that if you look at it from a little higher vantage point than driver seat, it seems obvious that it's those people who are stupid.
  - Zekio 9y ago
    Well electricity is so heavily taxed in Denmark the price for electricity is multiplied multiple times over. The actual cost like 90% of the price is taxes if I remember correctly. So taxes for electric cars "Fuel" have already been accounted for. Edit: grammar is hard
    - olau 9y ago
      It's about 70%. If you only count the electricity specific taxes, it's around 50%. Fresh numbers from todays elpris.dk - øre = Danish cents (yes, they are called ears). Cost of production: 26,05 øre/kWh Transmission: 35,19 øre/kWh Taxes: 105,40 øre/kWh VAT (25,00 pct.) 41,66 øre/kWh In total: 208,31 øre/kWh
  - lucaspiller 9y ago
    A lot of European countries have vignette stickers (often only for buses/HGVs), which are needed to travel on highways. The sticker attaches to the inside of the windscreen. The only infrastructure/logistics needed is to sell the stickers to fuel stations, and a few signs when entering the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignette_(road_tax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignette_(road_tax)
    - adrianN 9y ago
      The EU plans to introduce a common system for road charges in a couple of years: https://www.euractiv.com/section/road-charging/news/fifteen-eu-countries-will-be-forced-to-change-road-toll-laws-under-draft-rules/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/road-charging/news/fifteen-...
- roel_v 9y ago
  These taxes are from a time when cars were a status symbol; they're (most would say 'they were', but that I disagree with - nominally, yes, but I'm talking about popular support for the underlying sentiment) not so much a tax to stimulate environmentally responsible behavior as they are a tax to 'punish' ostentatious displays of wealth. It's the same as the 'BPM' tax here in the Netherlands. It's, at its core, a "protestant austerity" thing.
  - avar 9y ago
    If the BPM isn't a tax to stimulate environmentally responsible behavior why is it a direct function of CO^2 emissions, with no tax payable on zero-emission vehicles, no matter how mch they cost or how much of a display of wealth the are? 1. https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/belastingdienst/individuals/cars/bpm/calculate_and_pay_bpm/bpm_tariff/ https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/...
    - roel_v 9y ago
      Yes, that's what it is now nominally (especially now that it's directly related to CO2 emissions). But what I meant was - these taxes existed in a time when nobody cared about that. The BPM was even called a 'luxury tax'. It's a way to tax 'excessive' consumption, which is how cars were (are?) seen. The justification, on the surface, has changed nowadays. My point was, though, that the relatively wide spread acceptance of this sort of tax is not because everybody is so environmentally conscious; it's because it's a function of the cultural instinct to 'punish' those who flaunt wealth. Or if you don't want to call it 'punishment', at least to make those who want to drive luxury cars pay more on top of the taxes they need to pay that also apply to other goods (i.e., VAT). I mean, if those taxes were to make those driving cars pay for the building of roads and to counter emissions, you'd charge a flat fee, or a per-kilometer fee. You wouldn't tax them proportional to the list price of the car. A 250k Lamborghini doesn't wear out roads more than a Kia, but it costs several times the purchase price of the Kia just in taxes. So my remark was that, despite today's bend of environmentalism, these taxes need to be seen in the context of the broader societal mores of egalitarianism; or 'suppression of those that show wealth in socially not accepted ways', depending on how you want to spin it.
- notauser 9y ago
  Taxing vehicle use is a great idea, but vehicle ownership also has negative externalities which means it is appropriate to tax buying or owning a car including: - Polution created by making a car. - Cost of parking, especially in cities: - parking takes up space, making it harder to walk between things - street parking is untidy / ugly - street parking obstructs traffic, bike lanes and bus lanes - the need for large parking lots drives up the cost of building, which is passed on to drivers and non-drivers alike Even in suburban areas having the streets full of parked cars has negative effects like reducing the space available for children to play.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > - Polution created by making a car. No different from making any other object - you might as well tax e.g. TVs if that's the rationale. > - Cost of parking, especially in cities: Agreed, but better solved by disallowing street parking and taxing land ownership. Again, tax the parts that introduce the negative externalities as directly as possible, otherwise you create perverse incentives.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Agreed RE parking, but RE taxing TV - well, I'd say sure, tax it too. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that a general CO₂ emission tax would help solve so many problems in the current world...
      - adrianN 9y ago
        Most people who think about it and are not politicians seem to think that a carbon tax or a cap and trade system would be a very good tool to prevent global warming from getting even worse.
  - Reason077 9y ago
    This is actually a significant problem in the UK. You could create a much better environment for pedestrians and cyclists if city streets weren't clogged with parked cars all the time. Danish streets do seem to be much clearer, even in areas that have similar road conditions and population density to UK cities.
- avar 9y ago
  You can't selectively tax certain goods without creating a market failure. E.g. if the purchase of cars isn't taxed I'll just import €10,000 of audio equipment by buying an old beater, then ripping out and selling the sound system and selling the car for scrap, while making a big profit because I'll be competing with local sellers that have to pay import tax on sound systems.
  - notauser 9y ago
    This happens with cargo vans in the US, which are imported as passenger vans before being converted, to avoid a 25% tarrif on the import of cargo vans. http://blog.caranddriver.com/feds-watching-fords-run-around-on-chicken-tax-riles-customs-officials/ http://blog.caranddriver.com/feds-watching-fords-run-around-... However I'd challenge that this is a market failure - this is an example of the failure of a rules-based approach to regulation. In countries which take a principles-based approach to regulation then the substance of the transation is considered as well as the form. So this kind of nit-picking to circumnavigate the rules wouldn't have been allowed.
    - avar 9y ago
      What would you call it then? Market failures can also be created by ineffective regulation, as is the case in my example. Considering the substance of the transaction isn't a viable strategy, it might be possible at larger scales as in your Ford example, but individuals can and will find clever ways around tariffs that are impossible for the authorities to keep up with. As an example, I lived in a European country where import tolls on bicycles were much higher than the import fees on spare parts, so if the price of shipping was low enough you could simply ask the seller to send over a bike in multiple packages marked as spare parts to evade the import fees. How are you going to detect cases like that with perfect accuracy? You'd need some massive tracking system to figure out who bought what, and even then it could be trivially evaded by me and a friend buying 1/2 of two bikes each as spare parts and combining them after they've been imported.
  - relix 9y ago
    Audio equipment is not taxed at 100%.
- kawsper 9y ago
  Denmark are taxing fuel and requires you to pay "vægtafgift" (weight-tax, based on how much your vehicle weighs) and "grøn ejerafgift" (green owner tax, how efficient your car is per liter of gasoline) to be allowed to drive on the roads.
  - kagamine 9y ago
    For anyone interested, here is the govt. calculator in English (almost) for cost of import into Norway: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/cars-and-other-vehicles/import-car/calculate/calculator-import/ https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/cars-and-other-vehicle...
  - izym 9y ago
    Vægtafgift is not a thing anymore, there is only ejerafgift now.
- fulafel 9y ago
  The main harm from cars are co2 emissions, and electric car emissions are weighted to manufacturing and raw materials. So it makes sense to tax their purchase.
iso-8859-1 9y ago
A nuclear-powered truck with a RBMK-type (think Davy Crockett) reactor (with the right economics of scale) might be so cheap to make, it would be more competitive than a gas-powered truck over its entire lifespan. But it wouldn't be environmental. Can't I make the same argument regarding gas/diesel cars?
- tinco 9y ago
  Why would it not be environmental?
  - awjr 9y ago
    Each RTC would be a nuclear disaster ;)
  - lumberjack 9y ago
    Disposing of nuclear waste is not trivial.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Would be nice to have this productized and then miniaturized to fit under an engine cover: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.htm...
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  The bomb? I can't figure out what joke you're making here. "the same argument" as what argument?
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  RBMK just like Chernobyl.
misja111 9y ago
The stats are a bit misleading. Of course the sales for Jan 2017 will be low if it was known beforehand that Q4 2016 would be the last moment that electric cars were not fully taxed. Everyone who was planning to purchase an electric car would make sure to buy it in Q4 2016 and not in Q1 2017. This doesn't tell much about the future of electric cars sales in Denmark; after a while the sales will recover again and only then we will know if they have dropped comparing to the earlier numbers or not.
- NetMonkey 9y ago
  Not only that - judging from used car websites in Denmark around the time, quite a few people seemed to have bought Teslas with expectation that they could sell them at a higher price after the tax increase. If I remember correctly it was initially rumored that the tax increase would not have been gradual.
- foota 9y ago
  Right? Plus it looks like there's a seasonal increase towards the end of the year- should probably be compared against ice cars.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  I can confirm. I work with some Danes, one of whom bought a Tesla under this regime. There was a mad scramble to purchase Teslas before Q1 2017, which also shifts the numbers even more as people who weren't planning to buy before 2017 were incentivized to do so.
zakk 9y ago
I am skeptical that a 180% tax on fuel-powered cars is good policy, however I can see the point given that Denmark is extremely concerned about the environment. That said, I think that the same bracket on electric cars is a truly draconian measure.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Cars cause other problems beside pollution (not that electric cars are pollution free). An over reliance on cars leads to sprawl, sprawl reduces quality of life. Accidents costs lives.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    An over reliance on cars leads to sprawl, sprawl reduces quality of life It must be so nice to have the wisdom needed to prescribe everyone else's lifestyle.
    - doktrin 9y ago
      I'm not an expert on sprawl and QoL, but I'm pretty sure sprawl makes it harder to design effective public transportation (among other things). Likewise, the unavailability of effective public transit places a heavy reliance on personal transportation (i.e. cars), and by and large means long commutes in said car. Long daily commutes in a car don't sound very desirable, and probably do negatively impact QoL.
      - CamperBob2 9y ago
        ...probably do negatively impact QoL. With all due respect, there are about 5,999,999,998 people on Earth who didn't ask you or the grandparent poster.
        adrianN 9y ago
        Luckily, using the power of statistics we can get results using only a small number of people that are nevertheless valid for the whole population with reasonably high probability. There have been some studies regarding commuting time and well-being, for example [1], that show that longer commutes impact well-being negatively. Sprawl tends to increase commute times. [1] http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/commuting-and-personal-well-being--2014/art-commuting-and-personal-well-being.html#tab-5--How-important-is-actual-commuting-time- http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt...
orliesaurus 9y ago
We need electric self driving busses or similar, capable of moving large amounts of people frequently without the parking and other traffic related stress.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Electric busses self driving or not would not do you good in places where public transportation does not exist currently. Busses with drivers electric or not are easy to implement and we have them today, but many places still lack good (or even acceptable) public transportation links for many reasons including lack of investment, high car ownership rates or as far as cities lack of urban planning, especially for older cities that were not had to be rebuilt after WW2. Driverless busses would not really make a difference for any and many more root causes. They will reduce the cost of operating already existing bus networks with good traversability and optimized bus routes, they would not however magically help you to setup public transport where there has been none, in fact it might be more expensive to go driverless from the get go.
  - XorNot 9y ago
    Driverless buses would basically have the benefit that we can replace the driver with a fulltime security guard and have nicer buses.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Pretty sure in uk security guards make more than bus drivers?
  - inopinatus 9y ago
    This only holds if you think driverless buses are simply a standard scheduled bus service with no human driver. But I can already imagine on-demand or dynamic bus dispatch/routing that could be an order of magnitude improvement in mass transit service level to some communities.
    - 9y ago
mrweasel 9y ago
Tesla is a pretty expensive car, so when the buyers no longer got a discount on the purchase of an electric car less people could afford them. The Electric cars aren't selling because only a few people can afford spending $110.000 car, more than a house in some parts of the country. Even when the subsidy was in place most of the buyers were relatively wealthy people. You can question the Danish taxation of cars if you want, but what's killing Tesla and others is the high price. The best selling car in Denmark in 2016 was the Peugeot 208 at $20.000. If electric cars are to take of they need to hit the $20.000 - $40.000 price range. Tesla is a luxury which sold well among the well of segment of the population, when they were given a discount on the taxes, by the government.
- ebbv 9y ago
  There are a number of EVs available in the $20-40k price range. A majority of them in fact. In the US we have the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Bolt. In Europe the two have a number of other options available as well. The Renault Zoe is like a more affordable Leaf. I'm not sure what the VW eGolf clocks in at over there but it's probably in the neighborhood. So yeah, just because the Model S is a luxury car, don't make the mistake of assuming all other EVs are too. Here in the US if you can find a used Nissan Leaf you can get a really good deal.
  - _pmf_ 9y ago
    > I'm not sure what the VW eGolf clocks in at over there Ca. 35 000 EUR in Germany (which means less in the rest of the world, for whatever reason).
  - mrweasel 9y ago
    The Leaf is $40 - 45.000 in Denmark, so that's within range of most I would think, it's just that you can get bigger/better cars for the price. The Bolt isn't available in Denmark, it's under the Opel brand here and Opel won't sell it in Denmark because they priorities countries with an "ambitious policy".
    - ebbv 9y ago
workerthread 9y ago
I live in Denmark. I still see a rapidly growing number of electric cars on the streets. It is just smaller, less expensive electrical cars that take over (Renault Zoe, WV e-UP, Nissan Leaf). I would venture to guess that Danes don't want to spend more than X kroner on a new car. And the Tesla price point broke that limit when the tax discount was removed. Pronouncing the electric car uncompetitive over this is an exaggeration.
- dmix 9y ago
  The article doesn't say it lacks competition. The decline in growth is entirely the result of the huge import tax: > electric car dealers were for a long time spared the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine. This article is only looking at growth rates, not total sales by cost or by market position, so it wouldn't be a useful comparative metric anyway. If anything, what it indicates is that they'd sell 10x more cars (both electric/gas) if it wasn't for the tax. - 2600 sold in 2015 w/ 0% import tax - 200 sold in 2016 w/ 180% import tax
epx 9y ago
Poor Carina needs to eat!
jasiek 9y ago
Denmark has the most expensive electricity in Europe.
- drsim 9y ago
  source: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
- olau 9y ago
  Before someone jumps to conclusions: after taxes. Tax and VAT is around 70% of the price paid per kWh for ordinary consumers.
ebbv 9y ago
Here in Michigan our Republican government has instituted a regressive increase on EV license plate registration/renewal fees. The excuse is that EV owners don't pay the tax on fuel that petrol car owners do, but we still put wear on the road and therefore must pay the price. It's a load of crap though. Michigan's famously bad roads are not due to the very few EVs driving on them. It's semi trucks which are permitted to weigh far beyond what the road was engineered to handle. (Michigan has effectively no regulation of truck weight so the trucking companies overload their hauls and destroy our roads.)
netcan 9y ago
In one form or another, this is something electric car companies need to build into their expectations. Petrol taxes (exempt by default), sales taxes, road taxes & such add up to a sizeable tax revenue source. In many places they are linked to road/transport budgets. The tax breaks that electrics have been getting were implemented when the segment was so small that it didn't matter. Once electrics reach double-digit market share, they are probably unsustainable. They will probably need to find a replacement for petrol tax too. Rebranding these as "externality taxes" is well & good, but it doesn't change the fact that government departments need the revenue, externalites or not. Countries can easily afford to "subsidize" electric to get from 0.4% adoption to 4%, but 40% is almost out of the question. Then there's the regressive tax problem. Yuppies in Copenhagen will be driving tax free Tesla 3s while single mothers pay thousands to drive a Peugeot 206. Many countries implement new-car promoting policies (eg emission tax) of all sorts which are regressive. I doubt this will kill subsidies in itself, but combined with budget holes... TLDR - Tax breaks are for infant industries. Tesla is launching a mass market car. This is no longer an infant industry.
- RugnirViking 9y ago
  > Tax breaks are for infant industries. I wish someone could tell that to agriculture or aviation or steel
  - jdhn 9y ago
    Agreed, the subsidies that these industries receive distort the market. The question is whether the the electric car industry will follow in their footsteps in successfully defending their subsidies, or whether the subsidies will be rolled back.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Or big Oil.
- _archon_ 9y ago
  > Once electrics reach double-digit market share, they are probably unsustainable. They will probably need to find a replacement for petrol tax too. I agree. What form would such a tax take? You could tax tires, which is stupid because it encourages people to buy less safe long-life tires, or you could roll it into property tax, or a VAT, or grocery tax, etc. Even a part of a sales tax could make sense, since logistics for the supplier is included in the cost of the product anyway. Logistical infrastructure tax makes sense. What is best practice here?
mcv 9y ago
180% import tax?! I'm not sure how that's possible. Are they sure it's not 18%? Cars are an international market, aren't they? Aren't they bound by rules from the WTO and the EU? With that kind of import tax, I can imagine people can only afford to buy EU-manufactured cars. I hope Tesla hurries up with that European factory.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  I believe the 180% used to be the highest band of a registration tax (now 150%) that has nothing to do with imports. Apart from that there is a much lower import duty for cars from outside the EU (10%?), which has to be in agreement with WTO rules (and other trade agreements).
- ljf 9y ago
  https://www.thelocal.dk/20151120/whats-the-deal-with-denmarks-car-registration-tax https://www.thelocal.dk/20151120/whats-the-deal-with-denmark...
- joakleaf 9y ago
  Taxes are high in Denmark, but this isn't _import_ tax, which seems to be something that is getting a lot of attention in the US at the moment. It applies to _all_ cars, but electric used to be exempt. The tax is for "registration" when you purchase a car, and I think its primary (official) purpose is to limit the use of cars and pollution, as well as being aligned with the Scandinavian socialistic mind set -- If you can afford a luxury item such as an expensive car, you are also likely to be able to contribute more to society. Obviously, people buy cheaper and smaller cars than in the US, so owning 1-2 cars is still quite common despite the high tax rate if you live outside the city centers and need a car. Some countries have very high taxes on cars -- I think Singapore's is just as high if not worse.
  - ptr 9y ago
    A note regarding the "Scandinavian socialistic mind set"; Sweden doesn't have a tax like that and buying a car there is taxed comparably to Germany (with a car price at ~ -2% compared to the EU average).
Xoros 9y ago
So basically if the government of the country doesn't pay a huge part of the car (in cash or in tax deduction, or both depending of the country), the so called electric vehicle boom is not really happening. It's sad. But expected.
kagamine 9y ago
If any HN users are interested in car prices in Norway this is where you can see prices for new, used and leasing. This is the go-to (essentially only) marketplace for cars here : https://www.finn.no/car/used/search.html?filters= https://www.finn.no/car/used/search.html?filters=
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but is the name "finn" for the Norwegian site intentional?
  - moogly 9y ago
    It's the same word as "find", but yeah, a bit funny.
devy 9y ago
Price really matters. EV in generally are still costing consumers a whole lot more than the traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. And we've seen that similar EV sales drop due to subsidy running out last year in Atlanta as well.[1] [1] https://www.marketplace.org/2016/01/08/world/georgia-ev-sales-sputter-without-tax-break https://www.marketplace.org/2016/01/08/world/georgia-ev-sale...
hannob 9y ago
One thing that is worth mentioning: Denmark is one of the very few countries (two if I'm not mistaken) that takes cycling seriously. They also have good public transport compared to many other countries. If your goal is to reduce car traffic overall then not subsidizing EV is more understandable.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  I've lived in Finland for a few months and indeed, the cycling infrastructure wasn't what I'm used to as Dutchman. You're either on the sidewalk or in the middle of traffic, both of which are undesirable. Most of the year it doesn't freeze so a bike is perfectly usable. Not as if people work out of the city anyway, a train goes like twice a day. And within the city where I was, it's perfectly doable from one end to the other twice a day.
  - zurn 9y ago
    Bikes work fine in icy weather if you put on studded tires. I like the Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106, coincidentally (?) made in Finland.
- dmix 9y ago
  > Denmark is one of the very few countries (two if I'm not mistaken) that takes cycling seriously Considering the cars have a 180% import tax, a big percentage of the population couldn't afford a car even if they wanted to. So I'd hope they take it seriously. > They also have good public transport compared to many other countries. Given that this portion wouldn't have a way to get around without it, this seems like an absolute necessity which isn't necessarily the case in other cities. Poor people need to get to work somehow and reach shopping centers and family/friends outside of walking/biking distance. That said I'm fully in support buses/trains and biking. I bike everywhere and live in a city but still own a cheap car, which I still get a great amount of value out of and find indispensable. It is also important for my partners work who occasionally needs to drive to surrounding areas.
  - FullyFunctional 9y ago
Grustaf 9y ago
We won't really know this for a few years. The phasing out of the tax break was announced well ahead of time, so most people just made sure to buy one before it kicked in. When Model 3 has been out for a year and people have gotten used to the new price points we can revisit the question.
socrates1998 9y ago
The car company that is going to win the most market share in the next 10 years is the one with the best self-driving system. I don't know a lot of details about the technology, but Tesla seems to understand this, so this article seems to be about a small bump in the electronic car market in one smallish country. I just can't see how people don't just share cars once the auto-pilot is developed enough to drive itself, right?
elliotec 9y ago
We need electric busses, not cars.
Animats 9y ago
Well, this tells us the price point electric cars have to hit to be viable.
dinglebert1234 9y ago
Why must electric cars look and feel like gas cars? I’d love an ultra-light 4-wheeled vehicle that runs on electricity and is modestly outfitted for non-expressway driving.

143 points by bipson 9y ago

awjr 9y ago

Taxing the purchase of a car seems non-sensical to me. It is not, so much, the ownership that is the problem, but the use of the car that creates congestion and health issues. Tax fuel and bring in road pricing.

insertnickname 9y ago
More than half of the price of gas in Denmark is taxes.
- Tepix 9y ago
  Same in Germany, in 2014 it was 59%. In 25 of 28 EU states fuel was even more expensive than in Germany.
TulliusCicero 9y ago
> Tax fuel That accounts for fossil fuel cars but not electric ones. > bring in road pricing A fine idea except it's logistically difficult to implement tolls everywhere.
- marak830 9y ago
  Well cars have odometers don't they, tax based on that.
  - squimmy 9y ago
    Are you suggesting the Danish should be taxed for travelling they might well have done in Sweden?
    - wodenokoto 9y ago
      "The Danes" or "the Danish citizen". "Danish" is an adjective or a cake.
    - TorKlingberg 9y ago
      If the car was registered in Sweden they'd be paying tax there. If the per-mile tax is similar and there are a similar number of Danes driving in Sweden and Swedes driving in Denmark it evens out.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    People do drive abroad you know. If I do most(or any percentage) of my miles abroad why would I pay tax on those miles where the car is registered? Meantime, I buy the fuel in those other countries, paying tax there. No idea how to solve that for electric vehicles. Presumably still at the point of charging.
    - awjr 9y ago
      The consensus is around some sort of road pricing either through ANPR cameras or telematic boxes. Fuel duty revenue in the UK is £28billion. That's a big hole to fill.
      - gambiting 9y ago
        At the moment driving electric cars is so cheap because we buy electricity at domestic prices. It's as if we were buying utility oil(red diesel) for cars - then it would be stupidly cheap, no? There's a good reason it has been made illegal and you can't use heating oil for your car even though technically it would work just as well. I suspect that eventually you will be able to charge your electric car only from an approved charger that bills you a higher-rate car tariff, just like you can only use fuel sold at a petrol station in your car. As for the telematics - excuse me saying so, but the UK government can fuck off with suggesting even more surveillance, it's hard to fight off insurers installing telematics boxes as it is already.
        7952 9y ago
        I get the concern about surveillence. But I can see some amazing benefits of treating cars and the road as a single connected system. You could hold vehicles at the journey start point until space on the road opens up. Or adjust speed limits in real time depending on conditions. And maybe even remove traffic calming by modifying user speeds. The free-for-all we have now is hopelessly disfunctional and drivers suffer from that.
        gambiting 9y ago
  - mrweasel 9y ago
    Then you just create a different problem, or in case of Denmark, contribute to an existing one. You're going to make the poor worse of. Taxing on kilometers driven is unfairly hard towards those who cannot afford to live close to their place of employment. To the wealthy it won't matter much if you tax the purchase of the car or the kilometers driven. Those making below the average salary are normally excluded from living in the center of the cities, and is in some cases even forced outside the bus routes. Also Danish public transit is notoriously bad outside the four largest cities.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      How is it any worse than the current tax on gas, though?
      - mrweasel 9y ago
        It's not, but it is different to taxing the sales price of a new car, which was how I understood the idea.
      - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
        Taxing fuel it's better as it correlates quite well with engine size and usage and therefore pollution.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      I don't know how it in in Denmark, but wealthy people often live in nice houses in the suburbs and commute by car. Here in Berlin at least that is the case. The fuel taxes are offset by tax deductions for commuter miles though.
      - mrweasel 9y ago
        Well that true in Denmark as well, but both the city centers and the suburbs are pretty expensive, so risk getting pushed past those, and then you start getting into areas where public transport is basically non-existing.
      - 9y ago
- awjr 9y ago
  I suspect, requiring all cars to have a telematic device is the answer here. Insurance companies are already using these and the behaviour of individuals drastically improves when one is installed. This has an advantage in enabling provision of a device at country borders etc. Another option is to develop a cheap Automatic Number Plate Camera and create a network of cameras across our road systems. Both approaches not only allow road pricing strategies, but also address speeding. This may be a bit big brother for some but this is pretty much the way I see us heading.
  - Already__Taken 9y ago
    a complete big brother The future is going to be dreadful isn't it.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Blame the drivers. If most drivers weren't showing utter disregard to traffic laws pretty much all the time, there wouldn't be a dire need for ALPRs to curb speeding.
      - fivestar 9y ago
        And if speed limits were set to what people really drive you would see a huge drop off in speeding! People ignore things that are increasingly obviously stupid. Any time a large majority of drivers are ignoring the rules it's an engineering problem, not a driver problem.
        TulliusCicero 9y ago
        I basically agree, the problem is that we tend to say, "we want to make this road safe by making it tolerant of faster driving" which basically translates to encouraging faster driving because drivers base their speed on what feels appropriate.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > People ignore things that are increasingly obviously stupid. Except that if you look at it from a little higher vantage point than driver seat, it seems obvious that it's those people who are stupid.
- Zekio 9y ago
  Well electricity is so heavily taxed in Denmark the price for electricity is multiplied multiple times over. The actual cost like 90% of the price is taxes if I remember correctly. So taxes for electric cars "Fuel" have already been accounted for. Edit: grammar is hard
  - olau 9y ago
    It's about 70%. If you only count the electricity specific taxes, it's around 50%. Fresh numbers from todays elpris.dk - øre = Danish cents (yes, they are called ears). Cost of production: 26,05 øre/kWh Transmission: 35,19 øre/kWh Taxes: 105,40 øre/kWh VAT (25,00 pct.) 41,66 øre/kWh In total: 208,31 øre/kWh
- lucaspiller 9y ago
  A lot of European countries have vignette stickers (often only for buses/HGVs), which are needed to travel on highways. The sticker attaches to the inside of the windscreen. The only infrastructure/logistics needed is to sell the stickers to fuel stations, and a few signs when entering the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignette_(road_tax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignette_(road_tax)
  - adrianN 9y ago
    The EU plans to introduce a common system for road charges in a couple of years: https://www.euractiv.com/section/road-charging/news/fifteen-eu-countries-will-be-forced-to-change-road-toll-laws-under-draft-rules/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/road-charging/news/fifteen-...
roel_v 9y ago
These taxes are from a time when cars were a status symbol; they're (most would say 'they were', but that I disagree with - nominally, yes, but I'm talking about popular support for the underlying sentiment) not so much a tax to stimulate environmentally responsible behavior as they are a tax to 'punish' ostentatious displays of wealth. It's the same as the 'BPM' tax here in the Netherlands. It's, at its core, a "protestant austerity" thing.
- avar 9y ago
  If the BPM isn't a tax to stimulate environmentally responsible behavior why is it a direct function of CO^2 emissions, with no tax payable on zero-emission vehicles, no matter how mch they cost or how much of a display of wealth the are? 1. https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/belastingdienst/individuals/cars/bpm/calculate_and_pay_bpm/bpm_tariff/ https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/...
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Yes, that's what it is now nominally (especially now that it's directly related to CO2 emissions). But what I meant was - these taxes existed in a time when nobody cared about that. The BPM was even called a 'luxury tax'. It's a way to tax 'excessive' consumption, which is how cars were (are?) seen. The justification, on the surface, has changed nowadays. My point was, though, that the relatively wide spread acceptance of this sort of tax is not because everybody is so environmentally conscious; it's because it's a function of the cultural instinct to 'punish' those who flaunt wealth. Or if you don't want to call it 'punishment', at least to make those who want to drive luxury cars pay more on top of the taxes they need to pay that also apply to other goods (i.e., VAT). I mean, if those taxes were to make those driving cars pay for the building of roads and to counter emissions, you'd charge a flat fee, or a per-kilometer fee. You wouldn't tax them proportional to the list price of the car. A 250k Lamborghini doesn't wear out roads more than a Kia, but it costs several times the purchase price of the Kia just in taxes. So my remark was that, despite today's bend of environmentalism, these taxes need to be seen in the context of the broader societal mores of egalitarianism; or 'suppression of those that show wealth in socially not accepted ways', depending on how you want to spin it.
notauser 9y ago
Taxing vehicle use is a great idea, but vehicle ownership also has negative externalities which means it is appropriate to tax buying or owning a car including: - Polution created by making a car. - Cost of parking, especially in cities: - parking takes up space, making it harder to walk between things - street parking is untidy / ugly - street parking obstructs traffic, bike lanes and bus lanes - the need for large parking lots drives up the cost of building, which is passed on to drivers and non-drivers alike Even in suburban areas having the streets full of parked cars has negative effects like reducing the space available for children to play.
- lmm 9y ago
  > - Polution created by making a car. No different from making any other object - you might as well tax e.g. TVs if that's the rationale. > - Cost of parking, especially in cities: Agreed, but better solved by disallowing street parking and taxing land ownership. Again, tax the parts that introduce the negative externalities as directly as possible, otherwise you create perverse incentives.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Agreed RE parking, but RE taxing TV - well, I'd say sure, tax it too. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that a general CO₂ emission tax would help solve so many problems in the current world...
    - adrianN 9y ago
      Most people who think about it and are not politicians seem to think that a carbon tax or a cap and trade system would be a very good tool to prevent global warming from getting even worse.
- Reason077 9y ago
  This is actually a significant problem in the UK. You could create a much better environment for pedestrians and cyclists if city streets weren't clogged with parked cars all the time. Danish streets do seem to be much clearer, even in areas that have similar road conditions and population density to UK cities.
avar 9y ago
You can't selectively tax certain goods without creating a market failure. E.g. if the purchase of cars isn't taxed I'll just import €10,000 of audio equipment by buying an old beater, then ripping out and selling the sound system and selling the car for scrap, while making a big profit because I'll be competing with local sellers that have to pay import tax on sound systems.
- notauser 9y ago
  This happens with cargo vans in the US, which are imported as passenger vans before being converted, to avoid a 25% tarrif on the import of cargo vans. http://blog.caranddriver.com/feds-watching-fords-run-around-on-chicken-tax-riles-customs-officials/ http://blog.caranddriver.com/feds-watching-fords-run-around-... However I'd challenge that this is a market failure - this is an example of the failure of a rules-based approach to regulation. In countries which take a principles-based approach to regulation then the substance of the transation is considered as well as the form. So this kind of nit-picking to circumnavigate the rules wouldn't have been allowed.
  - avar 9y ago
    What would you call it then? Market failures can also be created by ineffective regulation, as is the case in my example. Considering the substance of the transaction isn't a viable strategy, it might be possible at larger scales as in your Ford example, but individuals can and will find clever ways around tariffs that are impossible for the authorities to keep up with. As an example, I lived in a European country where import tolls on bicycles were much higher than the import fees on spare parts, so if the price of shipping was low enough you could simply ask the seller to send over a bike in multiple packages marked as spare parts to evade the import fees. How are you going to detect cases like that with perfect accuracy? You'd need some massive tracking system to figure out who bought what, and even then it could be trivially evaded by me and a friend buying 1/2 of two bikes each as spare parts and combining them after they've been imported.
- relix 9y ago
  Audio equipment is not taxed at 100%.
kawsper 9y ago
Denmark are taxing fuel and requires you to pay "vægtafgift" (weight-tax, based on how much your vehicle weighs) and "grøn ejerafgift" (green owner tax, how efficient your car is per liter of gasoline) to be allowed to drive on the roads.
- kagamine 9y ago
  For anyone interested, here is the govt. calculator in English (almost) for cost of import into Norway: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/cars-and-other-vehicles/import-car/calculate/calculator-import/ https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/cars-and-other-vehicle...
- izym 9y ago
  Vægtafgift is not a thing anymore, there is only ejerafgift now.
fulafel 9y ago
The main harm from cars are co2 emissions, and electric car emissions are weighted to manufacturing and raw materials. So it makes sense to tax their purchase.

iso-8859-1 9y ago

A nuclear-powered truck with a RBMK-type (think Davy Crockett) reactor (with the right economics of scale) might be so cheap to make, it would be more competitive than a gas-powered truck over its entire lifespan. But it wouldn't be environmental. Can't I make the same argument regarding gas/diesel cars?

tinco 9y ago
Why would it not be environmental?
- awjr 9y ago
  Each RTC would be a nuclear disaster ;)
- lumberjack 9y ago
  Disposing of nuclear waste is not trivial.
majewsky 9y ago
Would be nice to have this productized and then miniaturized to fit under an engine cover: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.htm...
Dylan16807 9y ago
The bomb? I can't figure out what joke you're making here. "the same argument" as what argument?
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
RBMK just like Chernobyl.

misja111 9y ago

The stats are a bit misleading. Of course the sales for Jan 2017 will be low if it was known beforehand that Q4 2016 would be the last moment that electric cars were not fully taxed. Everyone who was planning to purchase an electric car would make sure to buy it in Q4 2016 and not in Q1 2017. This doesn't tell much about the future of electric cars sales in Denmark; after a while the sales will recover again and only then we will know if they have dropped comparing to the earlier numbers or not.

NetMonkey 9y ago
Not only that - judging from used car websites in Denmark around the time, quite a few people seemed to have bought Teslas with expectation that they could sell them at a higher price after the tax increase. If I remember correctly it was initially rumored that the tax increase would not have been gradual.
foota 9y ago
Right? Plus it looks like there's a seasonal increase towards the end of the year- should probably be compared against ice cars.
SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
I can confirm. I work with some Danes, one of whom bought a Tesla under this regime. There was a mad scramble to purchase Teslas before Q1 2017, which also shifts the numbers even more as people who weren't planning to buy before 2017 were incentivized to do so.

zakk 9y ago

I am skeptical that a 180% tax on fuel-powered cars is good policy, however I can see the point given that Denmark is extremely concerned about the environment. That said, I think that the same bracket on electric cars is a truly draconian measure.

adrianN 9y ago
Cars cause other problems beside pollution (not that electric cars are pollution free). An over reliance on cars leads to sprawl, sprawl reduces quality of life. Accidents costs lives.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  An over reliance on cars leads to sprawl, sprawl reduces quality of life It must be so nice to have the wisdom needed to prescribe everyone else's lifestyle.
  - doktrin 9y ago
    I'm not an expert on sprawl and QoL, but I'm pretty sure sprawl makes it harder to design effective public transportation (among other things). Likewise, the unavailability of effective public transit places a heavy reliance on personal transportation (i.e. cars), and by and large means long commutes in said car. Long daily commutes in a car don't sound very desirable, and probably do negatively impact QoL.
    - CamperBob2 9y ago
      ...probably do negatively impact QoL. With all due respect, there are about 5,999,999,998 people on Earth who didn't ask you or the grandparent poster.
      - adrianN 9y ago
        Luckily, using the power of statistics we can get results using only a small number of people that are nevertheless valid for the whole population with reasonably high probability. There have been some studies regarding commuting time and well-being, for example [1], that show that longer commutes impact well-being negatively. Sprawl tends to increase commute times. [1] http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/commuting-and-personal-well-being--2014/art-commuting-and-personal-well-being.html#tab-5--How-important-is-actual-commuting-time- http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt...

orliesaurus 9y ago

We need electric self driving busses or similar, capable of moving large amounts of people frequently without the parking and other traffic related stress.

dogma1138 9y ago
Electric busses self driving or not would not do you good in places where public transportation does not exist currently. Busses with drivers electric or not are easy to implement and we have them today, but many places still lack good (or even acceptable) public transportation links for many reasons including lack of investment, high car ownership rates or as far as cities lack of urban planning, especially for older cities that were not had to be rebuilt after WW2. Driverless busses would not really make a difference for any and many more root causes. They will reduce the cost of operating already existing bus networks with good traversability and optimized bus routes, they would not however magically help you to setup public transport where there has been none, in fact it might be more expensive to go driverless from the get go.
- XorNot 9y ago
  Driverless buses would basically have the benefit that we can replace the driver with a fulltime security guard and have nicer buses.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Pretty sure in uk security guards make more than bus drivers?
- inopinatus 9y ago
  This only holds if you think driverless buses are simply a standard scheduled bus service with no human driver. But I can already imagine on-demand or dynamic bus dispatch/routing that could be an order of magnitude improvement in mass transit service level to some communities.
  - 9y ago

mrweasel 9y ago

Tesla is a pretty expensive car, so when the buyers no longer got a discount on the purchase of an electric car less people could afford them. The Electric cars aren't selling because only a few people can afford spending $110.000 car, more than a house in some parts of the country. Even when the subsidy was in place most of the buyers were relatively wealthy people. You can question the Danish taxation of cars if you want, but what's killing Tesla and others is the high price. The best selling car in Denmark in 2016 was the Peugeot 208 at $20.000. If electric cars are to take of they need to hit the $20.000 - $40.000 price range. Tesla is a luxury which sold well among the well of segment of the population, when they were given a discount on the taxes, by the government.

ebbv 9y ago
There are a number of EVs available in the $20-40k price range. A majority of them in fact. In the US we have the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Bolt. In Europe the two have a number of other options available as well. The Renault Zoe is like a more affordable Leaf. I'm not sure what the VW eGolf clocks in at over there but it's probably in the neighborhood. So yeah, just because the Model S is a luxury car, don't make the mistake of assuming all other EVs are too. Here in the US if you can find a used Nissan Leaf you can get a really good deal.
- _pmf_ 9y ago
  > I'm not sure what the VW eGolf clocks in at over there Ca. 35 000 EUR in Germany (which means less in the rest of the world, for whatever reason).
- mrweasel 9y ago
  The Leaf is $40 - 45.000 in Denmark, so that's within range of most I would think, it's just that you can get bigger/better cars for the price. The Bolt isn't available in Denmark, it's under the Opel brand here and Opel won't sell it in Denmark because they priorities countries with an "ambitious policy".
  - ebbv 9y ago

workerthread 9y ago

I live in Denmark. I still see a rapidly growing number of electric cars on the streets. It is just smaller, less expensive electrical cars that take over (Renault Zoe, WV e-UP, Nissan Leaf). I would venture to guess that Danes don't want to spend more than X kroner on a new car. And the Tesla price point broke that limit when the tax discount was removed. Pronouncing the electric car uncompetitive over this is an exaggeration.

dmix 9y ago
The article doesn't say it lacks competition. The decline in growth is entirely the result of the huge import tax: > electric car dealers were for a long time spared the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine. This article is only looking at growth rates, not total sales by cost or by market position, so it wouldn't be a useful comparative metric anyway. If anything, what it indicates is that they'd sell 10x more cars (both electric/gas) if it wasn't for the tax. - 2600 sold in 2015 w/ 0% import tax - 200 sold in 2016 w/ 180% import tax

epx 9y ago

Poor Carina needs to eat!

jasiek 9y ago

Denmark has the most expensive electricity in Europe.

drsim 9y ago
source: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
olau 9y ago
Before someone jumps to conclusions: after taxes. Tax and VAT is around 70% of the price paid per kWh for ordinary consumers.

ebbv 9y ago

Here in Michigan our Republican government has instituted a regressive increase on EV license plate registration/renewal fees. The excuse is that EV owners don't pay the tax on fuel that petrol car owners do, but we still put wear on the road and therefore must pay the price. It's a load of crap though. Michigan's famously bad roads are not due to the very few EVs driving on them. It's semi trucks which are permitted to weigh far beyond what the road was engineered to handle. (Michigan has effectively no regulation of truck weight so the trucking companies overload their hauls and destroy our roads.)

netcan 9y ago

In one form or another, this is something electric car companies need to build into their expectations. Petrol taxes (exempt by default), sales taxes, road taxes & such add up to a sizeable tax revenue source. In many places they are linked to road/transport budgets. The tax breaks that electrics have been getting were implemented when the segment was so small that it didn't matter. Once electrics reach double-digit market share, they are probably unsustainable. They will probably need to find a replacement for petrol tax too. Rebranding these as "externality taxes" is well & good, but it doesn't change the fact that government departments need the revenue, externalites or not. Countries can easily afford to "subsidize" electric to get from 0.4% adoption to 4%, but 40% is almost out of the question. Then there's the regressive tax problem. Yuppies in Copenhagen will be driving tax free Tesla 3s while single mothers pay thousands to drive a Peugeot 206. Many countries implement new-car promoting policies (eg emission tax) of all sorts which are regressive. I doubt this will kill subsidies in itself, but combined with budget holes... TLDR - Tax breaks are for infant industries. Tesla is launching a mass market car. This is no longer an infant industry.

RugnirViking 9y ago
> Tax breaks are for infant industries. I wish someone could tell that to agriculture or aviation or steel
- jdhn 9y ago
  Agreed, the subsidies that these industries receive distort the market. The question is whether the the electric car industry will follow in their footsteps in successfully defending their subsidies, or whether the subsidies will be rolled back.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Or big Oil.
_archon_ 9y ago
> Once electrics reach double-digit market share, they are probably unsustainable. They will probably need to find a replacement for petrol tax too. I agree. What form would such a tax take? You could tax tires, which is stupid because it encourages people to buy less safe long-life tires, or you could roll it into property tax, or a VAT, or grocery tax, etc. Even a part of a sales tax could make sense, since logistics for the supplier is included in the cost of the product anyway. Logistical infrastructure tax makes sense. What is best practice here?

mcv 9y ago

180% import tax?! I'm not sure how that's possible. Are they sure it's not 18%? Cars are an international market, aren't they? Aren't they bound by rules from the WTO and the EU? With that kind of import tax, I can imagine people can only afford to buy EU-manufactured cars. I hope Tesla hurries up with that European factory.

fauigerzigerk 9y ago
I believe the 180% used to be the highest band of a registration tax (now 150%) that has nothing to do with imports. Apart from that there is a much lower import duty for cars from outside the EU (10%?), which has to be in agreement with WTO rules (and other trade agreements).
ljf 9y ago
https://www.thelocal.dk/20151120/whats-the-deal-with-denmarks-car-registration-tax https://www.thelocal.dk/20151120/whats-the-deal-with-denmark...
joakleaf 9y ago
Taxes are high in Denmark, but this isn't _import_ tax, which seems to be something that is getting a lot of attention in the US at the moment. It applies to _all_ cars, but electric used to be exempt. The tax is for "registration" when you purchase a car, and I think its primary (official) purpose is to limit the use of cars and pollution, as well as being aligned with the Scandinavian socialistic mind set -- If you can afford a luxury item such as an expensive car, you are also likely to be able to contribute more to society. Obviously, people buy cheaper and smaller cars than in the US, so owning 1-2 cars is still quite common despite the high tax rate if you live outside the city centers and need a car. Some countries have very high taxes on cars -- I think Singapore's is just as high if not worse.
- ptr 9y ago
  A note regarding the "Scandinavian socialistic mind set"; Sweden doesn't have a tax like that and buying a car there is taxed comparably to Germany (with a car price at ~ -2% compared to the EU average).

Xoros 9y ago

So basically if the government of the country doesn't pay a huge part of the car (in cash or in tax deduction, or both depending of the country), the so called electric vehicle boom is not really happening. It's sad. But expected.

kagamine 9y ago

If any HN users are interested in car prices in Norway this is where you can see prices for new, used and leasing. This is the go-to (essentially only) marketplace for cars here : https://www.finn.no/car/used/search.html?filters= https://www.finn.no/car/used/search.html?filters=

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
Slightly off-topic, but is the name "finn" for the Norwegian site intentional?
- moogly 9y ago
  It's the same word as "find", but yeah, a bit funny.

devy 9y ago

Price really matters. EV in generally are still costing consumers a whole lot more than the traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. And we've seen that similar EV sales drop due to subsidy running out last year in Atlanta as well.[1] [1] https://www.marketplace.org/2016/01/08/world/georgia-ev-sales-sputter-without-tax-break https://www.marketplace.org/2016/01/08/world/georgia-ev-sale...

hannob 9y ago

One thing that is worth mentioning: Denmark is one of the very few countries (two if I'm not mistaken) that takes cycling seriously. They also have good public transport compared to many other countries. If your goal is to reduce car traffic overall then not subsidizing EV is more understandable.

lucb1e 9y ago
I've lived in Finland for a few months and indeed, the cycling infrastructure wasn't what I'm used to as Dutchman. You're either on the sidewalk or in the middle of traffic, both of which are undesirable. Most of the year it doesn't freeze so a bike is perfectly usable. Not as if people work out of the city anyway, a train goes like twice a day. And within the city where I was, it's perfectly doable from one end to the other twice a day.
- zurn 9y ago
  Bikes work fine in icy weather if you put on studded tires. I like the Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106, coincidentally (?) made in Finland.
dmix 9y ago
> Denmark is one of the very few countries (two if I'm not mistaken) that takes cycling seriously Considering the cars have a 180% import tax, a big percentage of the population couldn't afford a car even if they wanted to. So I'd hope they take it seriously. > They also have good public transport compared to many other countries. Given that this portion wouldn't have a way to get around without it, this seems like an absolute necessity which isn't necessarily the case in other cities. Poor people need to get to work somehow and reach shopping centers and family/friends outside of walking/biking distance. That said I'm fully in support buses/trains and biking. I bike everywhere and live in a city but still own a cheap car, which I still get a great amount of value out of and find indispensable. It is also important for my partners work who occasionally needs to drive to surrounding areas.
- FullyFunctional 9y ago

Grustaf 9y ago

We won't really know this for a few years. The phasing out of the tax break was announced well ahead of time, so most people just made sure to buy one before it kicked in. When Model 3 has been out for a year and people have gotten used to the new price points we can revisit the question.

socrates1998 9y ago

The car company that is going to win the most market share in the next 10 years is the one with the best self-driving system. I don't know a lot of details about the technology, but Tesla seems to understand this, so this article seems to be about a small bump in the electronic car market in one smallish country. I just can't see how people don't just share cars once the auto-pilot is developed enough to drive itself, right?

elliotec 9y ago

We need electric busses, not cars.

Animats 9y ago

Well, this tells us the price point electric cars have to hit to be viable.

dinglebert1234 9y ago

Why must electric cars look and feel like gas cars? I’d love an ultra-light 4-wheeled vehicle that runs on electricity and is modestly outfitted for non-expressway driving.