Sales of electric cars in the Netherlands are not going well. Buyers have started to have doubts.
Bad news for the European Union and all car manufacturers who are switching en masse to fully electric. The buyers don’t want them. Or at least not now.
Fewer and fewer electric cars have been sold in recent months. And while they are becoming cheaper and it is sometimes even better to buy a new one than a used one. That’s because the potential buyers are unsure.
That doesn’t mean they are having an existential crisis, but that they are waiting. What will the future look like? Will we be able to get a charging station soon, or is the power grid full? Won’t cars become much cheaper than they are now? And what do we have to pay in taxes?
Electric car deflation
The consumer is not only doubtful, but also expectant. The car manufacturers are breaking their own windows by lowering prices. That seems like a good plan in the short term to sell more cars quickly, but if you do this for a longer period of time you will get a different effect.
Buyers will then have doubts about an electric car and wait. Maybe that dream car will become cheaper, so they won’t buy it yet. This results in a period of deflation.
Motor vehicle tax
If you now have an electric car in front of your door, you do not pay motor vehicle tax. But that will change in 2025. Then you will pay 25 percent of the normal rate for the first year, but in 2026 that will simply be the full price.
Then electric cars have a disadvantage. Because in the Netherlands you pay tax based on the weight of your car. Due to the battery pack, an electric car is easily hundreds of kilos heavier than a comparable car running on dinosaur juice.
The AD has kindly told us that you can suddenly transfer 720 euros per year to the state for a Fiat 500e and 1,800 euros for a Tesla Model X. If you buy a car now, you have to take that into account in your considerations, because you will probably still drive the car.
Sales are slumping
Sales seem to be going well if you look at the registrations. But these are often orders from last year that will be delivered in 2023. The dealers themselves notice reduced interest. The subsidy pot for the purchase of a new electric car, only just over half will have been used in 2023, while the bottom had already been reached in May last year.
Paul de Waal of the Bovag trade association tells the AD that as far as they are concerned the tax change is not a done race.
There must be a weight correction for motor vehicle tax, otherwise buyers will drop out and we will not achieve the climate goals
Bovag spokesperson preaches for his own parish
No electric car
All these things together make buyers increasingly hesitant about an electric car. In addition, electricity certainly does not always appear to be cheap. Prices can fluctuate considerably, as has become painfully clear recently with Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Hamas.
Now it also seems to be election time, so potential buyers may first want to know where they will stand with a new cabinet. Afterwards they might still buy an electric car?
This article Buyers do not want an electric car at all first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
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