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Denmark Is Killing Tesla and Other Electric Cars (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous shares an article: The electric car has dropped out of favor in the country that pioneered renewable energy. Sales in Denmark of Electrically Chargeable Vehicles (ECV), which include plug-in hybrids, plunged 60.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the first three months of 2016, according to latest data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). That contrasts with an increase of nearly 80 percent in neighboring Sweden and an average rise of 30 percent in the European Union. Denmark, a global leader in wind power whose own attempt at an electric car in the early 1980s famously flopped, used to be enthralled with them. Its bicycle-loving people bought 5,298 of them in 2015, more than double the amount sold that year in Italy, which has a population more than 10 times the size of Denmark's. The figures suggest clean-energy vehicles still aren't attractive enough to compete without some form of subsidy. However, it turns out that those phenomenal sales figures had as much to do with convenience as with environmental concerns: 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.
It's not an import tax but a registration tax. Applied to all cars, not just imported ones.
No 'subsidy' ever existed on EVs; rather, it was a tax incentive. Denmark has a huge tax on new cars, which can reach 180% of the car's value. EVs were exempted from this tax through the end of 2015; beginning in January of 2016, new EVs were assessed a 20% tax. In December 2015, as people rushed to avoid the looming tax change, 1,588 EVs were sold; the following month, 68 were sold. Last January, the tax on new EVs rose to 40%, and the tax reduction compared to conventional vehicles will be phased out completely by 2020.
Because of the collapse in EV sales as a result of this (1,300 EVs were sold in Denmark in 2016, while Tesla alone sold 1,300 EVs in Denmark in December of 2015, before the tax exemption expired), Denmark is walking back the changes to an extent; the tax rate will remain 20% until there have been 5,000 EVs sold, or until the start of 2019, whichever comes first. At that point, the tax rate returns to 40%, rising to 65% in 2020, 90% in 2021, and 100% in 2022. In addition, there will be a new tax on the electricity used to charge EVs, both private and commercial.
More details at electrek.co.
the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine.
No, goddammit.
The tax is 105% on the value up to ~$16K, and 150% (used to be 180% until about a year ago) on the value above that. There are also adjustments to reward good fuel economy.
Yes, the tax is high. But please get the numbers right.
Eat the rich.
180% registration fee
It's 150%, and only on the car's value above ~$16K. It's 105% below that value.
Eat the rich.
The fine is to pay the registration fee, plus a fine on top, plus they confiscate the car, plus you may go to jail if you do it more than once.
Also, number plates are centrally-registered, they would know pretty fucking quickly if a plate was fake.
Eat the rich.
That is, if they could catch me to give me a ticket... :-)
Catching a Tesla would be trival. An S is lightning fast for only a very short distance; a P100D can't even make one lap of the 14 mile Nürburgring at speed. All an officer has to do is chase until it goes into "limp" mode.
It was a flat tax on cars, nothing to do with propping up an industry. It's all about reducing ownership and driving people towards alternatives.
That may be hard to grasp for the United States which has the highest car ownership per capita in the world (at least out of countries with more than 100,000 citizens). But it's a very Scandinavian thing to do. Denmark has half the car ownership per capita than USA. Driving makes up less than 60% of traffic on Danish roads. And more than 80% of Danes own a bicycle. 60% of people in Copenhagen commute via bicycle.
That's the kind of thing this sort of tax aims for. It's also not unique to Demark. Several other countries have taxes to promote either green alternatives or traffic reduction. e.g. I paid 5600 EUR of tax on my small car in the Netherlands (based on emissions). That doesn't sound like much but given that the car was only 16000EUR in the first place, and that I also have 3200 EUR in sales tax as well as 600 EUR per year road taxes (based on petrol car, emissions and weight), cycling is an attractive alternative and when we moved here we reduced from 2 cars to 1. The Netherlands is fractionally above Denmark in car ownership.
In Singapore you also have serious car taxes. It's a small island so keeping cars to a minimum is in everyone's interest. On top of 180% of the value of the car in just registration fees, there's also 20% sales tax, a carbon tax if you emit more than 185g/km CO2 (which is about to be reduced to 160g/km and have 4 other gasses added to it), oh and a Certificate of Entitlement to own a car will cost you $50,000 USD on top of all that. Net result, they have 1/7th of the car ownership rate of the USA despite being a relatively wealthy country. Cycling rates in Singapore are relatively low, but public transport usage is very high.
If you have alternate infrastructure in place, a tax is a great way to get people to give up gas guzzlers.
Hardly anything in that summary is accurate.
Firstly, the nominal tax rate for vehicles is 150 % and that's only for the higher parts of the value of more expensive vehicles. Second, starting in 2016 taxes for electric vehicles started being gradually phased in. As such the tax on electric vehicles went from zero to at most 20 % of the tax on non-electric vehicles in 2016, plus there is a deduction on top of that effectively making anything cheaper than a Tesla still tax free (the tax system is progressive and value based, but the deductions are fixed value).
A lot of vehicles were hoarded towards the end of the zero tax period ending in 2015, making the sales numbers artificially high by displacing sales that might otherwise have come in 2016 to 2015 due to the foreseen tax hike. A lot of those vehicles were bought to subsequently sell for profit once the taxes kicked in, which is evident in that many have since been sold or exported. In 2017 the tax rate rose to 40 %, though through deductions still pretty much only Teslas (and some expensive hybrids) are actually taxed.
Lastly, since late 2016 and all the way up until mid April 2017 there have been very public political discussions about extending the tax breaks for electric vehicles. This means that during that time, only an idiot would have bought an electric car, knowing that it was highly likely for taxes to be cut on them again shortly. This is in fact what happened, and rates were lowered from 40 % back to 20 % for two more years. This makes sales naturally very weak in Q1 2017.
So in short, you can't compare 2015 to 2016 or 2017 without taking into account what happened during that time politically and the market forces that drove the 2015 spike. Basically the article is bad, and you should feel bad. ;)
Source: I drafted the legislation and can read.