Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway
agnnews.com
agnnews.com
I think this says more about Tesla's bizarre production and delivery schedules than it says about the automobile market in Norway.
Marketing is most likely the most important thing for new products nowadays. Quality becomes secondary if your target group thinks they get the best even though they don't.
The thing that irks me about this subsidy (or whatever you call it) is how ineffective it is. Something like $5000 per tonne CO2 avoided, if uou make some optimistic assumptions, which is 50-100x more expensive than most sensible emissions reduction methods. Adding insult to injury, total emissions from cars are growing, i.e. EVs lead to people driving more in total, not driving less in ICE cars. It's just greenwashing, pure and simple.
Don’t get me wrong it’s neat that this is the case but this is an anomaly which both isn’t “right” and not applicable to most places.
Norway has effectively a luxury tax of 100% on cars and it can go higher than that based on the rediculous EU pollution score.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_...
On top of that the policy focused heavily on engine “size” which again favored Diesel engines and vehicle weight which effectively screwed over early plugin hybrids and currently screws over large families and luxury cars.
The weight and capacity policy has also been abused to make luxury and performance cars considerably more expensive despite being more economical and less polluting at road speeds.
The BMW 520d has a combined MPG of 72 and 79 road, it’s still at a higher category than many less efficient cars simply because of how the policy is structured.
For gasoline engines specifically you’ll also find that many performance cars do offer higher efficiency at road speeds than your sluggish 1.8L minivan.
https://www.ft.com/content/fe6b79d4-af31-11e7-aab9-abaa44b1e...
Once Norway drops the tax advantages for EVs which is projected to happen somewhere past 2020 likely they'll be back to 'normal' quite quickly.
Also, this is for new sales, the bulk of the fleet is still ICE's (68%), with the majority made up by VW, Toyota and Volvo.
That’s how it would go if countries were equal. However, Norway’s a fairly enlightened and forward thinking place, so politically it’s not surprising they’re way ahead of the curve.
When you can buy a Tesla for the same price or cheaper and a bloody Volkswagen Passat you are going to buy a Tesla.
The Passat which in the US would cost you $20,000 has an on road price which starts at around $60,000 in Norway and most versions would cost you $70-75K.
Norway treats cars as luxury items and taxes them accordingly with 100% or higher import taxes and considerable overall road tax.
This isn’t that different than some other EU countries but the combination of an asinine taxation policy and a handful of incentives created a situation where cheap cars cost a fortune, where luxury cars are effectively a skin job but some EVs despite being a luxury item slip through.
Norway is already planning to cut many incentive and like many other EU countries tax EVs on a KW/h basis as well as their weight and class just like ICE cars are taxed today.
This would mean that the price and TCO of Tesla would increase to the level of other similarly priced cars in Norway which by 2020 should put a $100,000 US Tesla Model whatever in the $250-300K range in Norway just like the $22,000 cars costing $60000.
Cheaper EVs like the Leaf and Model 3 should remain affordable, at least to what Norwegians have been forced to call affordable.
If you live in a country where you don't drive your car outside your county (sligth exaggeration there), there's no need for fossil fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
In principle they have a point. As battery is still extremely expensive it is cheaper to make a plugin hybrid that can drive like 50 kilometers on a battery and uses small engine to get a bigger range. In practical usage such car will be 95% electric yet cheaper than pure electric with range of, say, 300 km. Yet in Norway only electrical cars have zero taxes. The tax insensitives for plugins are relatively minor and do not compensate for price increase due to more complex power train. So people looking for a bigger family car often get a gasoline or disel car.
It’s a bit like CRT vs LCD or HDD vs SSD. Eventually the reduced complexity or even weight of raw components are cheaper than counterparts.
Lithium isn't semiconductor engineering where every generation you double the density yearly (even that stopped long time ago).
Planning current policies on future scientific discovered usually doesn't end up as planned.
Increasing mining capacity can reduce the cost significantly. In very far future tho, most of it is probably going to be all recycled, but thats like 50 years ahead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N...