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.

Comments

So...

[DontBeAMoran]

It's all about price and market demand? If everyone who can afford an electric car already has one, of course the demand is going to drop.

What drug-induced hallucinations do people teach in business schools? Infinite growth is impossible, once the growth phase is over the target should be a nearly flat equilibrium.

Re: So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Denmark recently ended no-tax rules on "luxury" e-cars, so they are now also subject to the 180% registration fee (that is on top of 25% VAT, mind). Other than killing much of the original attraction, there's a psychological barrier to buying at 3x the price, what you neighbour got at 1x last year.

Re:Explanation

[ottothecow]

No. All cars are taxed that much (except for cars sold below ~$12k which are only taxed at 105%) . It is not an import tax, but rather a registration tax, so it doesn't matter where the car comes from.

The headline is pretty misleading though. All denmark is doing is applying the same tax to Teslas as it used to apply to other cars. For a while, Teslas in denmark were very "cheap". You could get a fancy Tesla without the tax for roughly the same price as a car with 1/3 of the sticker price.

Given the tax is an insane 180%, it was never entirely about emissions. It was also about encouraging people not to own cars, cut down on driving (wear and tear == buying new cars), cut down on upgrading perfectly good cars, etc. It is heavy-handed social engineering. Prior to the Tesla, these cars were kind of an "oddball" thing. But with the Tesla, it kind of just let wealthy car buyers get a huge discount on something that is sold as a luxury vehicle in the rest of the world.