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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 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.
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Why were the subsidies removed?
Cheap, long range EVs are available now (e.g. the Renault Zoe) but I guess there needs to be more choice in the market for them to really sell well on their own. The new Nissan Leaf is due later this year, Tesla Model 3 probably late next year for Europe and a few others.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Can someone explain *why* a 180% import tax ever existed in the first place? It's not like Denmark has a large domestic auto industry it needs to protect. And I assume the fee is only for cars imported from outside the EU (not Denmark), right? I can't imagine they'd be that interested in artificially propping up the Swedish and German auto industries. I just don't understand this.
Of course the electric vehicles should be subsidized in the form of reduced taxes, but completely eliminating them isn't the right answer either. Lower the duty to something like 20%, remove it for EVs, but still charge VAT for both.
It's not an import tax but a registration tax. Applied to all cars, not just imported ones.
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.
While they can achieve higher efficiency when operating only in their optimal power band, ICE vehicles typically operate at only about 20% efficiency in typical driving conditions. Meanwhile, a modern combined cycle natural gas plant will frequently achieve over 50% efficiency, and can even approach 60%. When combined with cogeneration (not an option for gasoline cars), efficiency can get into the 90s.
From an emissions point, this is also wrong. Compared to coal, gasoline wins in respect to some pollutants (PM, and would win on SOx except additional power generation requires additional scrubbing under EPA regulations), is a draw in regards to some (NOx) and gets blown away in others (VOCs, CO, etc). Compared to natural gas, it's no contest, gasoline loses, and badly. Also, centralized power stations emit their pollutants at altitude and in less densely populations, rather than at ground level in densely populated areas.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
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.
Not that any of this matters because the 180% is not an import tax, it's a registration tax and Denmark doesn't have a car industry they are protecting, but those are the same people making those comments for a reason:
USA person: Look at them Europeans protecting their jobs with tariffs and taxes. We need that.
USA person: You want me to pay how much more for my stuff? Why are you taxing the things I like. Screw you government!
Meanwhile as neutral third parties we say all free trade agreements with any nation not an equal is a bad idea which will cost you in the long run.
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.