The grant needs to go!

Dim Tim?

I think they really muddied the water with the electrification element, particularly when you look at the recommendations:

"Besides the generic recommendation that battery supply (actual and planned) should be monitored and potential bottlenecks anticipated by industry and governments, two specific policy recommendations follow from these conclusions:

1.

The reversal of the trend towards larger cars in Europe is likely to be helpful to meet the climate goals pledged;

2.

Incentivising lower levels of motorisation should be considered."

Both of those are variations on consume less. Nothing to do with electrification.

Tax credit is the least preferable, as I said. Don't focus on it.

Tax exemption, a flat one, with no limit, is the best and the simplest. No convoluted calculations. The onus is on the consumer to get it, which serves as a PR for the government. And it's the cheapest to admin for the Gov also.

No, it's not. See Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria. You will be always small if you think small..

If you want 1M EVs you need to think big. Copy Norway, copy Norway, copy Norway.

No VAT, no VRT, no motor tax for EVs. And increase the VRT for ICE based on poloution.

Norwegian market is similar to the Irish one, it's a very similar country in terms of population and car fleet, amongst the richest in the EEA, both have a high VAT, both have a VRT tax (not common in the rest of the EU). Norwegian policies push both the demand and the supply and 112000 EVs were delivered last year, compared to 8600 EVs in Ireland. That's 13 times more.

Where there's a demand the supply will try to adjust. There's no critical supply as some are saying here.

You're saying that carmakers wouldn't jump on the opportunity if EV demand was stimulated by better policies. This is false as evidenced by Norwegian sales.

Norway gets 100k units, Ireland gets 10k units a year, the EU gets 2M units a year. There's a supply. Yes, the supply is constrained somewhat but saying that government policies don't do anything to supply and should be abandoned in early adopter phase is completely wrong. This is exactly what the Irish gov is saying now and this is harmful to the objectives.

Also, the free market will not sort this out @ELM327@ELM327@ELM327

Did Norway or Sweden or the Netherlands use a free market solution to become the most advanced EV markets in the world? No. Heavy taxation of ICE, exemptions on EV and EV perks did.

Norway:

You can do free market once you have the market dynamics. Niche market (5%) in a corrupted/badly regulated market isn't a market. If you want to wait for the market to sort this out then you're up for a long wait. It would never happen in Ireland with current dynamics... There simply isn't enough demand at the price on offer to be met by weak supply. The demand isn't high enough as long as ICE cheaper and there are no other incentives.

If you're smart you don't buy any electricity during peak hours 😁

I have a 20kWh battery and of the electricity I buy from the grid, about 95% was at night rate, that was with my old inverter, with my new one and a bigger battery that's on the way it might go to about 98%. In winter. In summer it's very close to 100%

Yes. The norway model. But it's not a grant. Remove the grant, and thus the subsidy to OEMs, and instead replace it with zero vat and zero vrt. No subsidy to any OEM.

Everything is more expensive in norway. It's the price relative to competitors in market that you have to look at

@liamog - "If we wanted to emulate Norway, you'd be looking at massive tax increases across combustion engine vehicles."

Yes please 😁

What with a health service crisis, a housing crisis, cost of living crisis, Ukraine war crisis, etc, etc, I'm not sure if introducing uncapped tax exemptions thereby substantially increasing tax subsidies for larger expensive EVs would be palatable for the majority of taxpayers, or a useful mechanism to substantially increase the number of EVs on the road.

At least the current capped grant and vrt exemption is targeted at lower priced EVs, which is a more justifiable approach when dealing with limited public finances.

Now, in the meantime, if we find substantial oil reserves off the coast, then maybe we could give more consideration to the Norway model.