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Comment by thomasfl | Hacker News Reader

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. The singer of the group A-ha, Morten Harket, bought an electrical car in 1989 and refused to pay road tolls and ignored all the subsequent fines. That got a lot of attention, and Norway ended up having very affordable electrical cars compared to gas fueled cars. Norway is one of Tesla's main market.

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Meanwhile in Australia: electric cars are getting taxed more to support the aging oil infrastructure

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.

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.

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.

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.

It would have to be a per-year or per-mile tax, or else you will end up with safety issues when people avoid buying new tires (as you say, $500 more)

The way Sweden and other countries do this is through a car ownership tax, where things like address road usage, traffic accidents, state own parking and other aspects get funded. Gasoline is then taxed independently, so when people buy a electric car they still pay the car ownership tax. On top of those are congestion and road tolls.

Last time someone on HN discussed the Australia law I asked if Australia had a car ownership tax. It seems that they do, but that the money isn't enough to support road maintenance. Seems the easy answer to the new Australia law would be to increase the car ownership tax, lower the gasoline tax to match the increase, and then you don't need a special law for electric cars. No need to reinvent the wheel.

UK is similar, except roads are upkept from general taxes, for all road users, including cyclists, pedestrians, and of course horses (it’s the UK after all). Plus car ownership tax, and petrol tax.

It’s the common erroneous argument of angry drivers against cyclists: get off my road, you’re not paying for it.

General taxes is the big alternative. When the sum from petrol tax goes down you need to fill in the missing difference in the budget. Electric car owners don't feel targeted by general taxes. Taxing the fuel was a decent way in the past to move the taxation closer to the party that utilized the roads, but in the future we will need to find a different way.

As a side note about angry drivers, I actively try to avoid being angry with cyclists. They have to be outside in the rain and cold, while inside the car it's pretty nice. I can wait.

> As a side note about angry drivers, I actively try to avoid being angry with cyclists. They have to be outside in the rain and cold, while inside the car its pretty nice. I can wait.

Thank you!

Honestly I think it should be collected by insurance companies. You’re legally required to have it in basically all states so they’re effectively an arm of the gov’t, (and the BMV can collect it if you go the self-insurance route since you have to put up a cash deposit) plus your insurance company needs to know roughly how much you drive your car and so can charge proportionally.

car insurance is optional in some countries like NZ

I was under that impression that it _might_ be the case that tire/brake dust pollution was misdirection started by the oil/gas industry? Anyone more informed than me know the real answer to this?

In the UK tax is paid explicitly per car, in tiers of engine size (for passenger cars) and I should assume emissions / weight for commercial vehicles. Petrol is heavily taxed (by US standards), but that’s everywhere in the continent.

I like the idea of taxing tyres, as it explicitly taxes mileage and pollution. Would it create weird incentives? People running on tyres too long to avoid the tax? Reusing old, more polluting tyres?

Maybe we should just tax on mileage. In fact why not at the pump/charging station...

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.

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

You can never win arguments about how you define taxes. If it causes you financial pain it's gonna be felt as a punishment. I think lawmakers and statist types far too often mistake the rationale as 'the good thing we want to do with this money' rather than 'why you as an individual need to pay yet another tax or fee that we could have funded some other way.'

I don't think taxes should be too low and don't mind paying moderate amounts of tax, but I do think the number of taxes should be as low as possible to maintain legitimacy in the population. Nobody likes to feel nickel and dimed to death, so it's better to have a small number of predictable and easy to understand taxes than an endless variety of fees that add up to what feels disproportionately burdensome for the public. Policymakers need to remember that very few of the public are economic rationalists with pocket calculator brains.

> If it causes you financial pain it's gonna be felt as a punishment.

So...when you go to a restaurant and eat, paying feels like a punishment?

When you go to an amusement park, paying the entry fee feels like a punishment?

When you pay for a plane ticket...a new appliance...a movie...?

No, the only reason that "taxes are a punishment (or theft)" is a meme _at all_ is that there are a bunch of entitled, privileged, well-off folks who have decided that they have theirs and they don't want to spend anything that will improve or support society.

I've gone through these arguments a few times, and ... yeah, the naivete on the other side is profound. You're right that I won't "win" an argument with someone who espouses that, or at least I won't convince them of anything, but that's due to them ignoring reality.

In this particular case? A usage fee, for cars, that supports roads, for cars? Seems pretty damned natural-consequences to me. You're paying to use something, not "being punished" in any way.

What a strange and irrational comeback.

Road wear is disproportionately caused by heavy vehicles; one study estimated that "one 18-wheeler is equivalent to the impact of 9,600 cars". The gas tax is primarily a subsidy designed to support the trucking industry.

Or you can think of the trucking industry as subsidised. Trucks are used to haul goods to shops yes? Taxing them more will just increase the price of everyday goods and services (that depend on goods to function), it will unpopular among just about everyone but the rich (who won’t feel the impact of the price increase much).

You're not wrong, but this is the part where capitalism is supposed to encourage people to use methods that cost less in externalities. Businesses should pay for their externalities or else they aren't competing with each other fairly.

The question of who it is a subsidy to is important, but it is better to directly give them a subsidy than to skew the upstream market towards vehicles that damage roads and cost a ton of money to repair.

I doubt we'll get there though, I admit that we can't get anything effective done. And we'd need to effectively keep prices from rising at the register to even the playing field for infrastructure expenses.

I would love to see a citation for that as its a very surprising number!

Found it: https://www.gao.gov/products/109954

A couple of caveats: it's from 1979 and deals with interstates only.

We need trucks.

We don’t need people in cars.

We need trucks about as much as we need people in cars.

There is nothing we need but food and shelter, which is not the main payload for those trucks.

While some people might enjoy some of the useless consumerism crap that's moved from China to your closest shopping center via trucks, I enjoy driving my old petrol car through the landscape and to the track.

Now let's all step back, calm down and compromise. :)

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.

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...

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.

That's a simplistic view of one type of tax. If everyone in a community wants the city government to build a recreation center, and then government levies a tax on the citizens to pay for building/operating the center, are they being punished?

Punishment is really incorrect. Taxes are a form of incentive. It is a behavioral nudge, not a flogging.

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.

Then why are you not charged for napkins at a resturant? Regardless of need how the fees and taxes are distributed does lead to an effective discouragement - which is synonymous with punishment. It doesn't need an authority to impose them. The punishment for not unzipping your fly when peeing at a urinal is peeing your pants.

A tax on electric vehicles isn't necessary for society to function. It's just a medium for adding money to what is already more graft. So yes, it is effectively a tool to direct certain behaviors. As are all VAT and luxury taxes.

Income taxes are the major part of the income that society needs to function. The rest of the lot are just punitive ones, like estate and wealth taxes.

Taxes can be a perverse incentive for revenue hungry governments to encourage the taxable behavior.

> 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.

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.

It's like paying artists in "exposure". There's value, but it doesn't actually pay the bills.

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.

But many electric vehicles weigh a lot.

A tesla model s weighs about as much as a ford f-150.

EVs still drive on roads.

Roads? Where were going we don't need... Well, ok, I guess the future didn't work out that way after all.

So do bicycles which pay no road taxes :)

Since road wear is proportional to something like axle-weight to the power of four, bikes essentially don't matter.

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 :(

IIRC, renewing a Tesla registration is $6xx/year whereas renewing a gas car's registration is $1xx/year

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.

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.

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...

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.

>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.

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.

>> disproportionately taxing the poor since they can’t afford electric cars.

There are many layers to this. Rich people, people who own houses, have a better time with electric cars than poor people who rent apartments. Poor people also cannot afford to replace a car every decade. They shy away from tech such as batteries that have life expectancies less than a decade. Certainly few second or third-hand buyers want to purchase a battery pack with only a few years left in it. So the separation between gas an electrics isn't all about sticker price, but it is about money.

That argument is fairly common across the political spectrum. Your comment reads far better without the unnecessary and divisive last sentence.

Electric cars still create huge amounts of pollution when made, micro plastics from tires, and require ridiculous roads that plague the country.

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.

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.xhtm...

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.

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.

Australia is also still lagging behind in its vehicle emissions standards[0][1].

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/16/wrong-tu...

[1]: https://theconversation.com/australias-car-industry-ignored-...

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.

That's exactly what they're (planning on) implementing at a rate of 2.5 cents/km

Interesting - I haven’t read that. I wonder how it will work for PHEVs

The Aussie politicians have made it very clear who is lining their pockets.

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...

Sure, in Victoria. In other states we have incentives pushing for them.

Where can I read about that?

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

While we have a lot of hydro power, the grid itself is not ideal. There are several regions which are quite constrained in terms of how much power they can import from other regions.

For example, recently there's been quite high electricity prices here (as in most of Europe) due to lack of rain. However this only affected the southern half of Norway[1], as the northern part had a fair bit of rain but limited distribution lines to the south.

There's been quite a bit of talk in the news about how much we need to spend to upgrade our grid for the future. It's not gonna be cheap...

[1] https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-Pri... (compare Oslo with Tromsø for late September)

Last I heard, they actually have so much excess power that they're selling it to the UK.

Norway exports excess power most of the year. 71% over the last three years according to this page:

https://www.statnett.no/for-aktorer-i-kraftbransjen/tall-og-...

First, it’s great they have so much green power generation. I didn’t realize that.

In addition to generation there is local distribution. Power lines, transformers, etc. Is there any information on that part of it? I wonder if they needed to upgrade their grid.

Yep, we've just added a new 1.4GW interconnect between Norway and the UK. I believe it's the longest undersee interconnect in the world. Hopefully more will follow, I think more interconnects over greater distances are really important to help smooth out both demand and supply issues with renewables.

Production could outstrip local distribution precisely because the excess is exported. It doesn't tell whether distribution can handle increased load.

Do you know how they are generating electricity?

Lots of water in them fjords:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025497/distribution-of-...

93 percent hydro, 4 percent wind, 2.5 percent thermal.

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.

Electrically that is probably pretty inefficient. No doubt that it still makes sense economically.

I’m not aware of any pumped hydropower, but we can buy cheap and use less of the stored water when prices are low. The dams have capacity to store water on a seasonal timescale. However with shifting weather patterns and more renewables these margins may become strained. This winter we may have to import not only to handle peak loads, but also because some dams may run dry.

Mostly hydroelectric. 98% renewable energy sources.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway

Lots of cheap hydro.

Yes, and the electricity trade may contribute to higher prices for local consumers.

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.

And in parts of Canada apparently you have to pay additional taxes if you buy an EV, i.e. there are disincentives as opposed to incentives. Sold as being an effort to balance the lack of revenue from EVs skipping the various taxes on gas. E.g.: https://electrek.co/2021/10/04/canadian-group-satirizes-sask....

That's mostly because of the lack of midmarket cars.

I bought a used sub-$20k electrical car a few months ago; it can be done. The market needs pressure to create cars in that price range; right now EVs are mostly luxury cars. Tesla is not the car we should be aiming for; what we need are things in the class of the E-Golf, Kia Niro, FFE, Fiat 500E etc. that are the size of a Corolla and cost 20k CAD or less.

Until that's common on the market, the value proposition is flawed and nobody is buying an electric car to save money except for people who buy used cars that someone else has eaten the depreciation on (like me), or people who drive a LOT. Everyone else is basically buying these things as luxury items, and the cost doesn't matter, especially when you can get near-0% financing over 5+ years.....

You also need to make it realistic for people to own EVs without also owning a single-family home. My wife and I probably would have bought a PHEV, but we lived in an apartment so ... we went Hybrid instead.

As it is the EV subsidies are really just helping homeowners buy luxury cars which seems a little backwards

This is a great point. I would have loved to buy an EV (or trade in my current gas vehicle which I don’t use all that much for an EV), but the logistical annoyances of charging it in a busy city appear to be substantial.

> As it is the EV subsidies are really just helping homeowners buy luxury cars which seems a little backwards

The goal was to drive scale so that the price would drop, this has been successful. In the US the federal subsidy phases out after 500K. Tesla and GM have both passed that and have models that are less than the US average for a new car of $40K.

Many non-tree hugger analysts project that upfront EV costs will be equal to ICE by the middle of the decade.

>I bought a used sub-$20k electrical car a few months ago

Out of curiosity, what make and model? I'm trying to find an EV and like everyone is saying, it's all luxury vehicles.

If you think of it from the manufacturers perspective it makes sense. Supply of batteries is constrained so of course they are going to use them in cars they can make the most money from. This problem will solve itself over time.

This is why I think it was a mistake not to use plugin hybrids as a stepping stone to full EV's. They might be marginally more complex but you could make five times as many cars with the same battery capacity.

A used Chevy Spark is a great car if you don’t need more than 100 miles of range in a charge. I love mine, and it’s unbelievably zippy in terms of torque/acceleration.

Yeah, used EVs depreciate quickly. I'm comparing new Tesla Plaids to the C8 Corvette and due to depreciation its looking like the C8 will be much cheaper, and much more fun to drive. The C8 will drop 30k in 5 years according to C6/C7 data, whereas a Plaid will likely drop 70k. If I spend less than $800 a month on fuel the C8 is cheaper.

Currently C8s are appreciating their first year, which is really weird.

The Model S is really chonky at almost 5000 lbs, which is the same as a 4Runner.

> Currently C8s are appreciating their first year, which is really weird.

Why is that weird? That seems typical for new, extremely popular cars where supply isn’t meeting demand. It happened years ago with the PT Cruiser, and when Mini (re-)entered the US market. It’s happened with Teslas too. Right now it’s happening with the C8 Corvette and Ford Bronco, which are both really tough to find on dealer lots. In 5 or 10 years, they’ll have depreciated like more typical used cars. The tough part is guessing when supply will become sufficient (and values will drop).

That funny about the Mini, because it's such a shit car. I thought it looked like a fun little car but I drove one yesterday for the first time and it was garbage. Interior is crappy lightweight plastic too. Do some research on them and you'll see that they are trouble-prone as well.

Oh totally, I understand why its happening, but from a statistical point of view its hard to model. eg. If a car appreciates 20% in the first year, when it usually depreciates 20% does this affect its 5 year depreciation, or does it regress to the mean?

> Yeah, used EVs depreciate quickly.

Yeah, not sure about that. Currently, used Model 3 LR AWD from 2019 with around 10k-20k mileage go for just a few grand cheaper than what I bought it for (new) in 2019[0].

0. https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-2019-Tesla-Model-3-Long...

current used car market is supposedly historically high vs new - probably better to do a longer or earlier comparison before making conclusions, esp. if comparing a fairly new 'used' vehicle

Yeah the 2020 C8 sells used for $10-20k above MSRP but the market is weird right now.

I used the historical data for the Model S. Will definitely check out the 3.

Corvette vs Model S is kind of a weird comparison, especially with the weight comparison. One is a coupe and one is a sedan.

Maybe compare the Model S to an M5 or E63?

Please donate to your local food bank. Many people are hungry. You can help. Perhaps this one is local to you:

https://www.accfb.org/

Great idea thanks for the suggestion, however, I'll keep people employed instead so they don't need the food bank.

“I believe the best social program is a job.” — Ronald Reagan

Young tech employees with valuable transferable skills vs. typical food bank user (not meant as a slight!) are different populations most likely.

I was leaning towards the C8, rather than the Tesla.

It's bigger picture thinking, warmer summers, snowier winters, and turning major metropolitan areas back in coral reefs. Sadly, SF is too hilly for most of it to drown. Freedom is a full tank.

Well enjoy it. I’ve had a Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 with upgraded turbos and later a 2004 Audi S4 V8 with exhaust. Had a little Saturn Sky redline too. It’s all a lot of fun for sure. I’m 37 now though and thinking more about the people around me. Happy driving a Honda now and trying to make things better for all people. Freedom is helping others. I hope some day you get there.

Many of the people who need the food bank have jobs. Wages just aren’t high enough for some. You could donate a few hundred dollars and make a world of difference for a lot of people.

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"

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.

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.

What does "years" mean in this context? Considering we're talking about cars and not something that you would replace within a month, recouping the price difference within 4-5 years would still be okay.

And especially now with the added burden of the “luxury” car tax.

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/consult...

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.

How are Norwegians using money from the Oil Fund to buy EVs?

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/F...

"Don't look behind the curtain"

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).

> 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.

That is a a great way of using social impact for the environment. Celebs should really how can they actions like this

Neil Young made a similar effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LincVolt

What was he driving in '89?

A converted Fiat Panda.

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/norway-gm-electric-cars-mo...

The petroleum industry should have sent that race driver with the wrench to fix his little electric wagon.

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.

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.

> 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.

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