Norway again shows the all-electric car future is closer than people think

https://electrek.co/2021/12/03/norway-again-shows-all-electric-car-future-closer-than-people-think/
November sales: 73.8% BEV, 94.9% BEV + PHEV.

Norway made a needed market correction by taxing gas-powered cars to truly represent their costs.

With this market correction, electric vehicles are prevailing as the best solution as more EV options are hitting the market.

While other markets are more tentative in making the same market correction and are instead rolling out EV incentives that are clunkier but easier to accept politically, electric vehicles are closing the gap in terms of the value proposition.

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It is interesting to see how Norway trends took off in the last few years, and how quickly the movement picked up steam. Simply not offering ICE cars at this point wouldn't seem to be a problem for most dealers. No bans required.

I bet gas stations are shaking in their boots.

I am not completely familiar with initiatives Norway took to move the needle this quickly. So, the first article I ran across offered this explanation:

Norway lowered taxes on EVs to make them competitive with internal combustion vehicles. As an extra incentive, EVs are exempt from road tolls.

The other approach available was raising taxes on traditional cars, a kind of pollution tax. Norway decided to impose a 25% VAT tax on new internal combustion vehicles, in addition to a carbon tax of about 20%, plus smaller incremental taxes based on vehicle weight, a nitrous oxide emissions tax, and a car scrapping fee.

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Meanwhile, US policy makers are taking the politically "safe" or "clunky" EV incentive route rather than making ICE vehicles look unattractive.

From a fiscal perspective, the US approach aims to spend tax money on infrastructure and incentives. The Norwegian approach on the other hand reduced taxes on EVs, and imposed higher taxes on ICE. I wonder what the balance sheet looks like? Presumably far greater tax revenues. Now that the majority of Norwegians own EVs, they could relax tax benefits and toll incentives on EVs while keeping ICE taxes and there would be little political risk in doing so.

We already know, EV owners tend to be pretty loyal, the prospect of going back to ICE after owning an EV is pretty low for those with adequate home charging options. Losing some of the tax breaks for buying a second EV, or trading up to a new one wouldn't seem to be a problem at this point for Norway.