> For full electric cars you hardly pay taxes because the government wants to stimulate this clean way of transportation.

It's interesting that Netherlands seems to assume all electric cars are green. But Singapore actually calculates the carbon emissions per km and finds the Tesla Model S to be very environmentally unfriendly: the Model S attracts a surcharge of $15,000 while the BMW i3 gets a rebate of $30,000 [1].

[1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/electric-car...

Tesla is contesting this [1].

[1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/lta-relookin...

Yes, since electricity is generally as environmentally efficient if not much more so than gasoline, it should imply that a larger battery is even more efficient. This should be a mistake.

How is leasing cheaper than buying (due to tax benefit, etc.)?

It seems the rent/loan/buying tradeoff would be independent of the choice of car.

Put it this way - it's not cheaper, but it's more affordable.

Say a price of a brand new Tesla is 100k Euro. If you got a loan from a bank to buy it, you might be paying back 1000-2000 euro a month just to pay it back in a few years. That is quite a lot. There are companies however, which let you part-lease or part-hire or however they call it, when you pay roughly 1/2 of the value of the car over 3-4-5 years, but you don't get to keep it at the end. So you might have a brand new Tesla S, for say 400 euro a month - which is very affordable. The only caveat is that you don't get to own the car at the end - but for a lot of people that's not a huge issue.

This is like when your carrier pays for the phone, lets say you pay 10 EUR per month for a mid class phone and 20 EUR per month for a premium phone. Looks like a small difference (+ a "price" for the phone)

If you buy both without a carrier, you might pay 400 EUR for the mid class phone and 800 EUR for the premium phone. The price difference no looks huge.

(The difference in acucmulated prices is the "buying" price of the phone)

It's all well and good to "hardly pay taxes" on EVs when hardly anyone is driving them. It's not sustainable however, as revenue from road and fuel taxes will need to be replaced by some other tax at some point.

Washington state charges an extra $100 a year on evs because we don't pay road taxes through buying gas and paying the normal percentage of a gallon of gas.

> more tax (heavy car = high tax)

The weights of the Tesla Model S and the Mercedea Class S are pretty much identical.

You're just misunderstanding the parent post. He mentioned that the Tesla is tax beneficial because it's electric and the Mercedes selling at around the same price isn't because of its weight.

These two statements are not mutually exclusive.

In The Netherlands cars are taxed on multiple factors[1] including CO^2 emission, type, and very significantly on weight.

In Tesla's case the weight is being heavily offset by the lack of CO^2 emissions, whereas the Mercedes gets all the taxes of a normal gasoline car and the weight tax on top of that.

1. http://www.expatax.nl/kb/article/how-much-road-tax-will-i-ha...

but, at least in the Netherlands, they are taxed way differently. I also heard people that leased them, and in the end the price over a few years is comparable to a €30K car, not another €100K car.

Yes, I understand that. I just pointed out that the reason is not that the Mercedes is heavy and the Tesla light.

Presumably this comes from the fuel efficiency per manufacturer fleet, which tends to discourage heavier vehicles as they usually are less fuel efficient. So heavier, more polluting vehicle counts against you not strictly heavier.