That supports the commentators point of view.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=da&tl=en&u=h...
I would expect a less dramatic decline for lower-priced electric cars, some of which do also have sales in Denmark, like the Nissan Leaf or Volkswagen e-uP, but I haven't found numbers.
I guess the system works as well in Denmark as it did in Singapore (I lived in Singapore form 2010 to 2012).
Hasn't anyone attempted to go around it by finding someone in say Germany to register the car as a first owner and then immediately purchasing the car (as a used car now) from him?
That's one of the main arguments that is being brought up here in Estonia when the socialists try to create a car registration tax. The opponents claim that people will just go a bit south to Latvia and register their car there, and then just drive around with a Latvian registration. There aren't any restrictions that prohibit this.
Similar behavior exists with alcohol. The Finnish are especially well known for their alcohol-tourism into Estonia. They come here during weekends and buy multiple crates worth of alcohol and go back. Two-way ferry ticket from Helsinki to Tallinn can cost as little as 10 € during sales, so economy-wise it can be cheaper even if you just want a 6-pack of beer. The funny thing is that as years have passed and Estonian alcohol tax has risen, we're now in a situation where southern-Estonians drive to Latvia to get their alcohol. That's also why the car registration point is so clear to us, because we're already seeing it with consumables where you have to make regular trips instead of a single one.
But yes, some amount of this happens. The easiest case to get away with it is probably if you are actually from another EU country, and just keep it registered in your home country at a relative's address, and travel back occasionally to keep your license, insurance, and registration up to date. If you're Danish and have no foreign address, it would be more complicated to get it sorted out, especially with insurance, but I'm sure there are people who do it. Police attempt to crack down on it by looking for foreign-registered cars that seem to be parked too regularly in the same residential area (e.g. in front of a block of flats in Copenhagen). That's not illegal per se, since you might be a longer-term visitor, but they investigate these cases and catch some number each year.
Besides foreign-registered vehicles, the other most common evasion mechanism is probably agriculturally registered vehicles (which are exempt from tax). Hard to do if you have no connection to a farm at all, but in families where some of the family are genuinely farmers, the rest of the family who aren't will in some cases end up with all their vehicles registered at the farm.
I'm sure there's some kind of mechanism to prevent people from driving cars leased in another country, but how does it work?
How does police find those who drive a foreign vehicle illegally? Stop a vehicle in foreign plates, ask driver's license; if it is a local national driving, investigate. Police have very much powers in Nordic countries for these cases (they can always stop a car and investigate, there's no American type requirement for a probable cause.)
And of course, there are always people who report suspected tax evaders to the police.
There used to be a sort of a hunt for these cases between Sweden (who has no car sales tax) and Finland. E.g. there was a guy who lived in Haparanda on Swedish side and had a girlfriend in Tornio on the Finnish side, and stayed too many nights at the girlfriend's place. He got a big fine and had to pay back taxes because he should have registered himself as a local resident and imported and registered the car to Finland as well, including paying the car import tax.
I sold my first car to a Norwegian friend. It was a wreck so I sold it for the equivalent of 50 € (this was 1990). The friend then moved back to Oslo. She was asked to pay the equivalent of about 2000 € in car tax to register it in Norway. She gave it for scrap instead, of course.
If you are a permanent resident, you can't drive a vehicle with foreign number plates. That rules out leasing abroad.
Many people live in Malmö but work in Copenhagen precisely to avoid this restriction.
Leasing is usually a better deal in this case. You can get a small car for around 1500 kr / month.
I did the same for about 3 years in UK, and it was fine,even the local police and DVLA confirmed that I'm not braking any laws doing it, even though the law is structured in the same way - if you are a permanent resident you can't drive a foreign vehicle in the UK. Except if you work for a foreign company that gave you a company vehicle to use then yes,you can, and there doesn't seem to be any restriction on it.
For example: I know of a Dutch guy who leases a Ferrari through a Belgian company he set up for this, because it would cost him twice as much in the Netherlands. There are also examples of Belgian people driving cars with Luxembourg plates, etc. This is not illegal (though it's obviously a form of tax avoidance)
[1] See the question "Foreign company cars" here: https://www.skat.dk/SKAT.aspx?oId=2068721
Given we're talking a €100-120K tax difference on expensive cars, you can always consult a Danish tax lawyer and if he thinks it's doable do it anyway. If the tax authority has a problem with it then, then you just take it to court. Seems worth investigating.
So a $20k car is $45k? What the #(%^@! ???
I mean, I personally disagree with this approach as I love driving and buy new cars, but I can see and understand why they do it that way. Denmark has extremely well developed public transport and most people get along without cars just fine.
Nowadays car ownership is popular enough that I'm not sure you could successfully introduce such a tax if people were not already used to it existing, and used to current new-car prices. When it was introduced, cars were seen as a rarer luxury than they are now, so a luxury tax was not too unpopular, and many people were also swayed by arguments that they had a significant negative social impact, on things like pollution and traffic and injuries, that should be paid for by taxing them [1]. But since it exists, if you cut it, you have to either raise some other tax, or cut some spending program, to account for the revenue; and you probably also have to build more roads and parking to account for the extra cars. That kind of change isn't so popular, and cars (especially new cars) are still culturally seen as not quite a necessity, so keeping the not-that-loved new-car tax remains less bad politically than the alternatives. Though it being lowered from 180% to 150% is a sign that consensus around it is not as strong as it once was, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more incremental cuts in the future.
[1] E.g. one 2009 analysis found that, even accounting for all the taxes, cars still have a 15% negative impact (costing society $1.15 for each $1.00 paid by car owners): http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/10/danish-180-tax-on-cars-...
It's quiet.
It's got surprising torque for an economy car.
It's got a lot of room for a compact car. I'm 6'5" and gave plenty of head room, legroom, and vertical field of view.
Have not been to a gas station in 5 weeks.
The difference is, a compact traditional car sells for 15 k€ new, while Leaf goes for 40 k€. Even with European fuel prices, the difference is going to buy you plenty of power juice to drive around – and can get you to your cabin at the neck of the woods without having to stop for a charge if you so wish.
It's not very much – in fact, quite the opposite. Unless you share the city you live in with, say, your parents, in most cases you probably couldn't make a trip to meet them without stopping to charge.
The demographic that it serves successfully is growing every year, as more cities ban or fine cars with emissions, as battery prices drop, as people get less scared of the new, as people experience and like the peppy driving feel of an EV, as more models are produced by more manufacturers and more niches are filled and as charging networks expand.
I think we can all look back and see amazing progress from cars like the EV1 and how many assumptions have been shattered in the last decade or so. It just amuses me that as this kind of progress happens, then there will always be something to complain about (and the complaints will often be geniune and factual) that just a short time ago would have seemed like science fiction. Like the comedian that talks about his seat-neighbour complaining that the airplane wi-fi is slow.
The three major fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—accounted for most of the nation's energy production in 2015:
Natural gas—32%
Petroleum (crude oil and natural gas plant liquids)—28%
Coal—21%
Renewable energy—11%
Nuclear electric power—9%
It might help reduce emissions directly in city centers, but the power plants are generally not that far from large cities anyway. Since EVs are also much heavier in general (Tesla P85D is ~4936lb vs a Corvette at ~3347lb or a Civic at ~2738lb), even though they are pretty efficient, they're still pretty close (when I ran the numbers before, they were higher) in greenhouse gas emissions once you factor in how much energy it takes to drive one vs an ICE vehicle. Batteries are also pretty nasty to dispose of and have a comparatively short lifetime -- a well-maintained car from the 90s is still very much drivable today (and cars without batteries can be maintained almost indefinitely), while battery packs aren't very useful past 7-10 years.
In that same vein, rare earth minerals are required in much larger quantities for EVs due to the batteries and the motors. Many countries mining and processing those don't care much about the environment, so they're mined and processed in environmentally-irresponsible ways, and we're now massively increasing demand for them. This is from 2010: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/forget-lithium-its-rare-earth-mi...
Because they're sold as "green" and "zero emissions", and due to the various government tax breaks (which even applied to >$100k Teslas and >$1m Porsche 918s), single-driver carpool lane privileges in California (significant because about 50% of EVs sold in the US are in CA), priority parking spots, free (employer-subsidized) charging at many workplaces, EVs are ever more popular despite them being about even from what I can tell for the environment when you look at the total lifecycle vs normal cars. This bothers me. Many EV drivers do not seem to understand the impact their vehicles have, seemingly because it says "zer0 emissions" on the license plate frame.
Bigger issue with weight is the road wear and tear it causes. The effect isn't even just linear, but much more than that – some studies have calculated that road wear increases to the fourth power in increased vehicle mass[1].
By that account a 5000 lb. Model S causes 16 times the road wear compared to a 2500 lb. compact car. Also, cars do not “eat” the road, they pollute the local air with it (especially the smaller particulates are very nasty stuff indeed in heavily trafficked areas).
Tesla roadsters, OTOH, are holding their value very well despite being basically a collector's item at this point.
Service and operational costs are already lower on EVs than fossils, and that is unlikely to change significantly.
For example, with current gasoline and electricity costs in Norway, powering an EV costs 10% of what a fossil cost per kilometer.
So incentives might be necessary right now, but not for much longer.
Comparing e.g. Norway and Australia; the standard (petrol powered) engine models in Norway aren't even offered here, no-one would buy them. Sure the cars are loaded with every conceivable luxury option, yet ultimately even your base BMW has less power than the average Toyota Corolla in Australia. (Whilst you might say that this is bad, please don't get me started on the horrible idea Europe had to promote the use of toxic diesel cars over petrol ones; I used to ride a bicycle in Oslo, and it was foul.)
I think the move to make electric cars so affordable is great. Whilst the more prosperous buyers were the first to benefit, there's now a generation of cars moving into the 2nd hand market making the cars more affordable for everyone. Also, with their hydro power, it is truly green energy.
Or... you close loopholes as they appear. Which happens in countries with a functional political system, unlike the US.
A pure EV basically gets a 50% tax cut, which can be $100k if you were looking at a comparable ICE car to the Model S.
So in Norway the opposite is true "ICE vehicles are considerably more expensive".
You can also ask yourself this: what value you get for your money on a given budget if you buy a Golf at $50k which is half taxes, versus a Bolt at a similar price with almost none of it being tax? I'd choose the Bolt any day.
Obviously none of this translates to anywhere else. It's a lot easier to give a massive tax break if you had a huge tax initially, than it would be for e.g the US to slap on a 20% tax on new ICE vehicles. (Unless of course they are made in Mexico in which case it's apparently easy).
I've owned an older model for 4+ years now. I haven't seen any drop in battery performance yet and the company says the battery should last 8+ years without problems. I can believe that based on my experience.
The older model is available in the UK. https://mahindrauk.com
If the battery is only charged to say 80%, and only discharged to say 30%, instead of doing full charges and discharges, it'll last longer. EV manufacturers know this trick and stop charging at something like 80%, while telling the user it's fully charged.
See for instance this article: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/31/battery-lifetime-long-c...
Even including a brand new battery, total cost is still well below your 15K EUR max budget, using real-world numbers you can actually purchase with today :
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?make=RENAULT&model=ZO...
I don't know what the second hand car market is like where you live, but just in case it's similar to the UK, it's possible to get a second hand hybrid electric car for similar money in the UK. For example, can get a second hand Prius for less than £3k if you shop around:
http://m.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_sacat=18290&_from=R40&_trksi...
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison though. a Nissan LEAF or Renault Zoe will probably end up around your 4k euro price when they get to be 7 years old too.
My point is that if you want an affordable EV option, they exist. You don't have to be an engineer to afford an electric car anymore, they've become reasonably cheap, and prices seem to slowly be dropping every year
What? Where? Denmark? I'd seriously consider. Here (Finland) they are completely unavailable as used, and new ones start at 32 990 €.
It looks like a new Zoe sells for exactly half the price in UK (14 k£ , 16 400 €) than here in Finland (33 k€). Is there a substantial subsidy on electric cars in UK? Here they have less tax than others.
Bear in mind that with many examples of Renault and Nissan EVs, you also have to pay a mandatory monthly battery leasing fee - even as the second or subsequent owner. So the headline purchase cost is only part of the price.
There are some Zoes, and a larger proportion of Leafs, in which the battery is owned outright but one has to check before purchasing.
Seriously people, everyone driving ICEs is using a massive subsidy loophole with respect to carbon emissions.
I have an honest question (and don't downvote me for this), but how do you enjoy life in Scandinavian countries?
Everything seems to be taxed to hell: income, wealth, cars, alcohol, etc. Does that actually leave any room for fun that involves spending money?
People don't need to be living in massive luxury and you don't always need to spend money to enjoy yourself, but aren't these countries pushing it?
I think a lot of it comes down to material vs non material quality of life.
First of all, very little of taxes evaporate in e.g wars. That helps. Most of it seems to fund things that make me happy or at least not worried. I'm not worried about getting sick, old, whether my kids can go to university etc. At least I don't worry about the economics of it. In the US I'd live in a house twice as big and I could likely drive a fun car on the weekends. On the other hand I wouldn't be doing 8w of time off every summer and 2 years off with the kids. I honestly don't mind 30% income tax and a large chunk of payroll tax, just so I don't have to pay health insurance companies, do pension saving or save for college.
All the money I have at the end of the month is basically for spending. There is no need to save it other than in case the car breaks down or similar. I keep a months salary or two on hand for that. I don't need a pile of money for growing old or being sued or sending the kids to college.
When it comes to "taxes on fun" I'm inclined to agree a bit more - some things feels like gov't parenting, but it has some nice side effects such as making people drink nicer wine (a $2 bottle of wine would be $8 in Sweden while a $10 bottle might be $10 in Sweden. So understandably the $2 bottle isn't even imported).
I can't imagine the brainwashing required to make people accept that.
What I described is basically the reality in any oecd country (there is one outlier and it's not Sweden). If it's a brainwashing scheme it's a pretty large one.
How do you enjoy life having to worry about health insurance and saving your whole life to pay for your children's education? Have a look at the World Happiness Report [0]. Of course we are perfectly capable of enjoying life.
The effect is that very large proportions of the population end up with a better standard of living.
Just the other day, I watched a documentary about the protests that led to the opening of the Inner German border and the demise of the GDR. It was kind of sad to see people protesting for various kinds of freedom, knowing that most of them will only get choice (e.g. the choice of which country they cannot afford to travel to because their jobs were not competitive anymore).
By the way, I don't think that Europe has systematically more freedom (by the above definition) than the US. There are some life plans that you can only carry out in the US, and some that can only be realized in Europe.
Same with universities, vacation, labour laws etc...
A. These numbers are made up
Extra benefits include the infrastructure, technologies, and knowledge that we develop, that would not have existed because no businessman would have considered them to be profitable.
The government of the USA is filled with lots of pointless but well-paid jobs, and there is a noticeable small-government-conservative faction that is constantly harassing the government with their counterproductive regulations.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/17/feds-delay-caltrain-el...
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/the-fallac...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/09/22/california_s_...
When a government has 300 million+ people to represent, it needs to have very limited responsibilities and powers, because the common interests of so many people are very limited.
That is (cargo culting political attitudes aside) largely why the American relationship with the federal government is "adversarial"- the larger it grows, the easier it is for special, non-representative interests to take advantage of.
There's a similar story played out among union participation here; the larger the union, the less individuals feel that it is working exclusively in their best interests. Likewise: approval for individual congressional representatives is typically high, but Congress itself invariably has very low approval ratings.
I'm not sure I agree with that. The common interests of people are basically the same - education, health, housing ...
There are over 80 million people in Germany. Not in the same league as the US, but still a huge country. And I don't think (obviously this is not data) that people here feel the government don't work for their interests. In a very small country like Ireland (where I'm actually from) the government seem to me to be much less 'representative' of the people, due to cronyism and corruption (see current Irish gov scandal expected to bring down the government within weeks - http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-the-maurice...)
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/09/opinion/flynn-expand-congress/
The thing is you obscure it with an unusually high employer social security contribution.
But even looking at "just" income tax and employee contributions on an average salary, Belgium ends up at 32.4% of total employee costs (so these numbers are lower than the percentages paid of gross salary) vs. Norway with 25.2%, Sweden with 18.8% and Denmark at 35.8%.
If you instead of looking at total labour costs, you look at gross wages, Belgium is at 42%, vs Denmark 36%, Norway 28.4%, Sweden 24.7% (for comparison: US: 25.6%). This also places Belgium as the highest taxed OECD country,
Denmark is the extreme opposite of Belgium, in that Denmark has extremely low employer social security contribution and no employee social security contributions (it's baked into the income tax).
[1] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...
If you are worth €5m, you can honestly get away with paying almost no tax. If you earn a salary however, you pay ~55%. There is no capital gains tax, which does attract wealthy people to move and spend here, so that's a definite positive.
I would argue we’re a high tax country, that is also a tax haven for some. I think that for most people, the high overall tax rate + employer cost is hurting.
At the same time, most of the things the government is giving back tend to go to employees, so the people that pay most generally receive the most back from the system, which is good.
Mostly you have fun by doing things that are cheaper - you might play a table top game rather than go to the cinema, or watch the movie at home; eating out happens of course, but it is typically much rarer than in the US.
The upside to happiness is that the downside is somewhat limited - if I end up with no money at all I can go to the city and get Kontanthjælp (cash assistance, though that is transferred to the persons bank account), which will be paid out so long as I don't have a job and participates in certain required things that is supposedly going to get me a job. Unemployment insurance is paid out for two years, and would be about 60% of my income. Of course we also have tax paid health care, but while that is okay for immediate crisis (I can get a heart attack right now, have somebody call an ambulance, spend two weeks in hospital, and paid them nothing) it sucks for chronic issues because you will end up being placed on a waiting list, which means you could end up getting your treatment six months from now.
Tax on average Norwegian salary: 28.4% on an average USD PPP adjusted salary of $60233 [1], for a net PPP adjusted salary of $43127
US: 25.6% of an average USD PPP adjusted salary of 50964 for a net PPP adjusted salary of $37917
Norway is not a particularly high tax country even in percent tax paid for an average earner, but even less so when considering the high salary levels. And despite having one of the most expensive socialised healthcare systems in the world (to a large extent due to high average salaries).
The salary curve is also far flatter in Norway - for good or bad far more people earn near the average salary.
[1] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...
Some of it though is a remnant of a more "puritan" time.
I'm genuinely curious.
Most countries, in practice, actually subsidize car ownership by taking back in road tax less of what is actually spent on caring for externalities.
Add to that that, in most of Europe, population density is such that lots of people are actually able to live without a car. Buying a car if you live in a medieval city centre is 100% "for fun" and makes life awkward for everyone (parking and so on).
Some economists argue that by taxing these goods, society as a whole spends less on them, but people still get the positional benefits, because the person with the biggest house still can look down on the person with the smaller house, even if the house is only 50% larger, rather than 100% larger. If those goods also have other externalities, like cars do and sprawling suburbs full of mcmansions, then you get a double benefit.
Edit: Removed paragraph about market share.
Figure is too high for that hypothesis.
Note that it was only when Tesla made the EV comparable to a sportscar that it picked up in Norway. And that was because now the rich of the nation could bypass the rush hour traffic and not pay road tolls, while still own something that looked and drove like the neighbors gas guzzler.
Over time that thinking trickled down to the wider population along with more practical and cheaper EV designs.
But now the big incentive is gone, and thus i suspect the trend will reverse soon enough.