To what extent is the sale of electric cars dependent on incentives? We have the paradigmatic case of Denmark, where cutting many of the tax incentives caused the electric vehicle market to simply collapse: of more than 5200 cars sold in 2015, only 698 were sold in 2017.
With the also falling sales of diesel engines — the opposite path to that of gasoline engines, hence higher CO2 emissions — Denmark is once again putting on the table the possibility of increasing tax incentives to revive the sale of zero-emission vehicles .
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Danish Prime MinisterWe have tax breaks for electric cars, and we can discuss whether they should be bigger. I will not exclude this (from the discussion).
This debate is part of a larger debate on how to increase the consumption of clean energy — last year, 43% of the energy consumed in Denmark came from wind energy, a world record, a bet that the country intends to strengthen in the coming years —, with measures to to be announced after the summer of this year, which includes which types of vehicles should be promoted and which should be penalized.
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This possibility also arises after the government in office was criticized for the cuts made, which led to sharp drops in sales of so-called "green" vehicles — Denmark has no car industry and has the highest import taxes in the world associated with cars , an incredible 105 to 150%.
The opposition also took advantage of the dispute generated to announce the ban on the sale of Diesel cars from 2030, if it wins the next elections, to take place in 2019.