12 ms·

There's a huge price difference between electric cars and gas fueled cars here in Norway. Gas fueled car buyers have to pay both 25 percent VAT and an additiona

• ostenning 5y ago
  Meanwhile in Australia: electric cars are getting taxed more to support the aging oil infrastructure
  • njovin 5y ago
    Similar in California and other states. The states typically tax gasoline and since electrics don't use any they are implementing special fees on electric vehicle purchases to make up for lost revenue. One would think that the savings in pollution (not only for the car itself, but the transport of the fuel, pollution from refineries, etc.) would offset any lost revenue from gas taxes. What makes this really nonsensical is that many states still have electric vehicle rebates. They give you a rebate of a few thousand dollars to reward you for buying an electric vehicle but then charge you a few hundred dollars to punish you for buying an electric vehicle.
    • lttlrck 5y ago
      California is looking at a road usage charge. Longer term, as gas tax revenue drops, it seems inevitable. And other jurisdictions will do the same. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB339 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
    • fdr 5y ago
      EVs still drive on roads.
      • sdenton4 5y ago
        Roads? Where were going we don't need... Well, ok, I guess the future didn't work out that way after all.
      • njovin 5y ago
        So do bicycles which pay no road taxes :)
        • adrianN 5y ago
          Since road wear is proportional to something like axle-weight to the power of four, bikes essentially don't matter.
    • SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
      In Colorado at least it's not that high. $50 plus a small amount (today) that goes up over time to no more than $96 in the 2031-2032 fiscal year. It's CERTAINLY a lot less than you'd be paying in gas tax if you used your car an average amount. Taxes aren't punishment, anyway. Especially "road use taxes", which are, in this case, used to repair the roads you're driving on. [1] https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/11486 https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/11486
      • plantain 5y ago
        Taxes are a form of punishment, they're a tool to discourage certain behaviours relative to others. Whether roads are funded by road taxes or primary school fees doesn't matter - if we want to promote a behaviour we subsidize it; if we want to discourage it, we tax it. Whether and how the books balance in the background isn't relevant.
        • fspeech 5y ago
          I don't think income tax is there to punish you for having income: even with the tax higher pre-tax income results in higher after-tax income. But even if road usage linked fees were a punishment, it is against car ownership in general, which seems fair to me. The relative incentive of electric over gas is still there.
        • adrianN 5y ago
          Technically we want to punish people for driving a car. Electrics are of course better than ICEs, but they're still a lot worse that cycling or taking a train. It would of course be nice if the infrastructure wasn't optimized for cars...
        • LadyCailin 5y ago
          Oh my god, no they aren’t. Taxes are a tool for society to function. They can be used to discourage things, sure, but they are not a punishment in most cases. Do you consider paying for your meal at a restaurant a punishment? Give me a break.
          • 5y ago
    • no_butterscotch 5y ago
      Wow really? I have a Tesla in CA and am only familiar with the electric vehicle credit (not sure what it is, I haven't looked into it) and the "you get to use carpool lanes" rule for EVs. Otherwise, I'm not familiar with extra taxes :(
      • feifan 5y ago
        IIRC, renewing a Tesla registration is $6xx/year whereas renewing a gas car's registration is $1xx/year
        • gnicholas 5y ago
          Part of the difference is that Tesla is an expensive/new vehicle, and vehicle registration (at least in California) is tied to vehicle cost. But I think they do charge extra to make up for the fact that you never have to smog an electric vehicle.
          • mehrdada 5y ago
            There is an additional $100 fee specific to EVs in California and an increasing annual tax. https://electrek.co/2020/07/10/california-starts-charging-ev-registration-fees-up-to-175-in-july/ https://electrek.co/2020/07/10/california-starts-charging-ev...
        • njovin 5y ago
          California's vehicle registration fee factors in several things, the most influential (I think) being price, which is probably why Tesla registration is higher than most gas cars. I've seen $500+ registration fees on ICE trucks.
    • supperburg 5y ago
      Because in the states if you didn’t do that a bunch of idiots would accuse you of disproportionately taxing the poor since they can’t afford electric cars. Social justice at its finest.
      • dredmorbius 5y ago
        That argument is fairly common across the political spectrum. Your comment reads far better without the unnecessary and divisive last sentence.
      • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        >idiots would accuse you of disproportionately taxing the poor since they can’t afford electric cars. Are they really idiots if that's the reality of the situation? It's gonna be a long time before EVs are in the beater car price brackets.
        • dredmorbius 5y ago
          It's a short-term / spiteful / envious-response action resulting in long-term harms. As I've already noted, the complaint is common across the political spectrum. From the Left, it's usually couched as a minority / inequality argument that such policies disadvantage poor minorities. From the right, it's more usually aimed at latte-sipping, college-educated, elitist liberals. Whilst there's some truth to both portrayals, the underlying reality is that the common weal is served by developing (and trialing) alternative technologies and solutions, and building out necessary infrastructures. If there are inequities that arise out of them, then other taxation and spending parameters can be adjusted to achieve a net-neutral economic impact, or to offer / promote conservation and efficiency options which are better suited to minorities and/or the white / rural poor. Note that the whole divide-and-conquer tactic is also very often supported at least in part by the interests directly harmed by such initiatives: traditional fossil-fuel powered automobiles, coal producers, and the like. Look beyond the engagement at the front to see what the generals are scheming and whom they're manipulating to their own advantage.
      • sandworm101 5y ago
    • collegeburner 5y ago
      More the fact that many states fund road work with a gasoline tax, this makes sense since it's got a decent correlation on how much use somebody gets from the roads. Electrics don't do this so states will come up short as more electrics get adopted otherwise.
      • dan-robertson 5y ago
        My understanding is that road damage scales with the fourth power of the weight over the axle but fuel usage does not scale in the same way. In particular, heavy trucks do the most damage and of consumer cars, electric cars do more damage as they are heavier. Of course the people who most require roads to be constructed tend to be people trying to drive to or from their homes rather than large freight carriers who mostly require maintenance of highways.
    • nostromo 5y ago
      It should be based on weight, not the car’s value. Most of the wear and tear on our roads come from trucks, not passenger cars.
      • m463 5y ago
        But many electric vehicles weigh a lot. A tesla model s weighs about as much as a ford f-150.
    • dragonwriter 5y ago
      > One would think that the savings in pollution (not only for the car itself, but the transport of the fuel, pollution from refineries, etc.) would offset any lost revenue from gas taxes. It does, in social impact sense (gas taxes in the US are universally way too low to cover the impacts). OTOH, diffuse social benefit doesn't pay for road maintenance, and states have legal and practical requirements for short-run operating budget balance. The right solution would probably be increase general taxation, in a way that misses the low end (e.g., bump income taxes, but not the lowest brackets), to cover the costs.
      • jacobolus 5y ago
        The ideal would be to dramatically tax petroleum products (at least covering the massive environmental and social costs of air pollution and global climate change from their use), also tax cars (and especially large trucks) in general to fund road maintenance, and (a) distribute the proceeds from petroleum taxes uniformly to every resident, while also (b) better funding public transit, building bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure, etc. This would encourage people to move away from environmentally unsustainable modes of transportation while not unduly harming the poorest.
      • kosievdmerwe 5y ago
        It's like paying artists in "exposure". There's value, but it doesn't actually pay the bills.
    • anigbrowl 5y ago
      I mean, I think it's OK to charge vehicle owners some kinda usage fee to reflect the cost of congestion, road wear, traffic accidents etc., but it's very poorly implemented as is. An obvious solution seems to be to tax tires which are the dirtiest part of an electric car, need to be replaced moderately regularly but not too often, and which wear down in proportion to the amount and and intensity of use. Offroaders and people who want to do donuts or drive like speed racer will need to replace their tires more often, but taxing tires avoids bureaucratic/administrative overhead. There are already taxes on tires, but they seem pretty nominal. I think you could hike them substantially (eg to $10 or $20 per tire) without upsetting too many people if you scrapped or reduced some other fee or abolished the necessity for a piece of paperwork. Edit: as some pointe dout the real wear comes from trucks an dother big commercial vehicles. Tires are already taxed by vehicle weight class, but I'm proposing increasing the fees for that in order to simplify bureaucracy elsewhere.
      • oh_sigh 5y ago
        You could have something similar to dyed diesel for tires, where, say, orange tires are untaxed and can only be used on private property/off-road, and regular tires can be used on public roadways.
      • yuliyp 5y ago
        Tires last too long to make this practical, I think. Let's say a set of tires lasts 30,000 miles. California's current gas tax is 67c/gallon. Let's assume a very efficient 40 mpg. That's 1.6 cents / mile. You'd need a $500 tax on a set of tires to compensate. if you did that, though, you'd need to prevent people from importing tires from other states, which is tricky to do.
        • londons_explore 5y ago
          You could have a special "California tyre" which has a state approved logo on the side, and require all cars registered in the state use them. They could be designed to last however many miles the state likes by putting more or less tread on them. And have a very obvious marker they are worn out so police can easily give tickets for people driving on worn out tyres.
    • zip1234 5y ago
      I have both an electric car and a Chevy Silverado 4x4 truck. My electric car has a $450 registration fee every year. My truck is only $130.
    • megablast 5y ago
      Electric cars still create huge amounts of pollution when made, micro plastics from tires, and require ridiculous roads that plague the country.
  • grecy 5y ago
    The Aussie politicians have made it very clear who is lining their pockets.
    • BLKNSLVR 5y ago
      It's impossible to exemplify the truth of that statement more clearly than this: The current Australian Prime Minister, who was Treasurer at the time, brought a lump of coal into Parliamentary Question Time[0]. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott...
  • fighterpilot 5y ago
    Where can I read about that?
  • BLKNSLVR 5y ago
    Australia is also still lagging behind in its vehicle emissions standards[0][1]. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/16/wrong-turn-why-australias-vehicle-emissions-are-rising https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/16/wrong-tu... [1]: https://theconversation.com/australias-car-industry-ignored-the-elephant-in-the-room-carbon-emissions-66759 https://theconversation.com/australias-car-industry-ignored-...
  • 10u152 5y ago
    They need to get taxed somehow (they still use public roads after all). Just build it in to registration costs. Yearly inspection takes the odometer, charge based off km at registration time. No need to over complicate it.
    • adamjb 5y ago
      That's exactly what they're (planning on) implementing at a rate of 2.5 cents/km
      • 10u152 5y ago
        Interesting - I haven’t read that. I wonder how it will work for PHEVs
  • Handytinge 5y ago
    Sure, in Victoria. In other states we have incentives pushing for them.
• marvin 5y ago
  Would be interesting to eventually hear Elon Musk's thoughts on Norway's role in Tesla's success. We were a very big market for them in 2013-2018, one might suspect critical.
  • magicalhippo 5y ago
    With half the Teslas made going to Norway for quite a while, I think indeed it was a key to their success. Not just the numbers, but also the geography and climate. Make a car that can be used for a long trip any time of the year here, and you're set for most markets. There's a reason why car makers come to Norway and Sweden to test their new cars before launch.
• iddan 5y ago
  That is a a great way of using social impact for the environment. Celebs should really how can they actions like this
  • 52-6F-62 5y ago
    Neil Young made a similar effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LincVolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LincVolt
• tkbeili 5y ago
  Very interesting. In Canada, it will take years to recoup the price difference for buying an electric car even with government incentives. 25% VAT + Extra tax seems to work.
  • pmalynin 5y ago
    And especially now with the added burden of the “luxury” car tax.
    • _3u10 5y ago
      The luxury car tax doesn't really apply to new cars. If the seller is registered with the govt as a seller of luxury goods then it does not apply. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/consultations/2021/consultation-proposed-luxury-tax/select-luxury-goods-tax.html https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/consult...
  • jszymborski 5y ago
    Agreed! We have subsidies for electric vehicles under a certain price, but imo prices just get inflated to "what the market is willing to pay" + "value of the subsidy"
    • dietr1ch 5y ago
      Isn't that intended? That extra revenue should also come with extra pressure to deliver cost-efficient products as new parties may want a share of that sweet subsidy. Initially it may look like the subsidy is just throwing out money, but if the subsidy is kept around for a while it becomes a bounty for future competitors.
      • jszymborski 5y ago
        That's certainly not how it's marketed, at least. A lot of the communications on it have been "Take advantage of our subsidies and save!". If this is a business-side incentive versus a consumer-side incentive, I personally would much rather they just give them the money directly based on sales and avoid the dishonesty of making folk feel like, even after "savings", EVs are expensive.
• mikewave 5y ago
  What was he driving in '89?
  • Koshkin 5y ago
    A converted Fiat Panda. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/norway-gm-electric-cars-morten-harket/ https://reasonstobecheerful.world/norway-gm-electric-cars-mo...
• mfer 5y ago
  How is Norway handling the increased use of the electric grid? I ask because Elon noted the US power grid needed to double output to handle a full is transition
  • paultnylund 5y ago
    Last I heard, they actually have so much excess power that they're selling it to the UK.
    • albertop 5y ago
      Do you know how they are generating electricity?
      • sdenton4 5y ago
        Lots of water in them fjords: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025497/distribution-of-electricity-production-in-norway-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025497/distribution-of-... 93 percent hydro, 4 percent wind, 2.5 percent thermal.
      • hackerNoose 5y ago
        Lots of cheap hydro.
      • xyproto 5y ago
        Mostly hydroelectric. 98% renewable energy sources. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway
      • runeks 5y ago
        They aren't necessarily generating it -- sometimes they're just storing it. When we produce too much electricity from wind turbines here in Denmark, Norway buys this at a negative price (to offload the Danish grid), stores it (using pumped hydroelectric energy storage), and sells it back into the market when prices are positive again.
• fortuna86 5y ago
  > Norway is one of Tesla's main market. This is also because they are a small, very rich country and cannot be used as a comparison to others.
• matsemann 5y ago
  Other stuff is free/reduced toll on roads, lots of free charging, often cheaper parking on public spots, can use the bus lanes in heavy traffic (probably soon going away now that half the cars being electric would block the buses).
• tclancy 5y ago
  The petroleum industry should have sent that race driver with the wrench to fix his little electric wagon.
• neverminder 5y ago
  It's a bit ironic that Norway is able to buy all those electric cars because of all that oil money they make. Production of electric cars still costs more than that of fossil fuel cars.
  • londons_explore 5y ago
    "Don't look behind the curtain"
  • runeks 5y ago
    How are Norwegians using money from the Oil Fund to buy EVs?
    • theodorton 5y ago
      Norway has a fiscal deficit every year, in order to cover the deficit we're allowed to spend a couple percent of our holdings in the Oil Fund to. To my understanding, this is done by selling assets on a monthly basis in exchange for Norwegian currency by Norges Bank. [0] One could argue that the government would not be able to offer subsidies on EVs without that option. 0: https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/liquidity-and-markets/Foreign-exchange-purchases-for-GPFG/ https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/liquidity-and-markets/F...
• runeks 5y ago
  > There's a huge price difference between electric cars and gas fueled cars here in Norway. Gas fueled car buyers have to pay both 25 percent VAT and an additional tax on purchase. Buyers don't have to pay neither of those taxes if they buy an electric car. You're talking about a tax difference, not a price difference. We have the same taxes here in Denmark and our EV sales aren't anywhere near Norway's level. Probably because the actual prices end up being roughly equal, but the EV usually has lower range and takes longer to fill up compared to the equally-priced gasoline car.