Sweden stops subsidies for electric cars
After other countries such as Norway and England decided to make vehicle taxes for electric cars compulsory, Sweden has now also cancelled subsidies for electric cars. The reason is that even without subsidies, electromobility is capable of gaining ground in Swedish cities.
The number of electric vehicles is rising rapidly and the green turn is making headway on the roads. So quickly have cars with electric drive become accepted in the country that the corresponding subsidies have become less important and can now be abolished without replacement. This is the latest decision from Stockholm, where no climate bonus has been granted since 8 November. Buyers of plug-in hybrids, as well as fully electric vehicles, will namely no longer benefit from cost subsidies for new purchases.
"According to the government, around half of new car sales are currently accounted for by electrically powered cars, so-called climate bonus cars. In the meantime, the purchase and driving costs in the country have also stabilised at the level of petrol or diesel vehicles and are currently "comparable with them" - the Swedish administration explains further. The waiver of further state-subsidised premiums had thus "become unnecessary" and could therefore no longer be justified.
A decision that was noted with interest by other EU states. On the one hand, because the phase-out of internal combustion technology planned for 2035 is, at least in theory, supposed to drive the rapid growth of the e-car market even without state subsidies. And secondly, because this time it is directly about an EU member state. Because even outside the European Union, countries are increasingly cancelling benefits and subsidies in the wake of the electromobility boom. Norway, for example, has already announced that the VAT exemption for electric cars will be abolished on 1 January 2023. Great Britain has also recently begun to plan for the introduction of a vehicle tax obligation for e-vehicles - possibly from 2025.
Germany, on the other hand, is only hesitantly moving forward with this and is content for the time being with limiting the subsidy to purely electric or hydrogen cars and reducing the amount of the environmental bonus. Will Germany follow suit after the developments in Sweden and, who knows, in other European countries? Or will the European Union take the plunge earlier and determine an internal standard according to which such subsidies are stopped? The resources saved in this way could then be invested, for example, in other forms of green mobility - for example, in measures that could perhaps even work more efficiently in the context of the transport transition.