City and regional governments in Norway, meantime, have started to complain of a revenue shortfall from all the free-riding e-cars that are not paying fees and tolls. Mr. Lunde, the deputy climate minister, said changes to the program were inevitable, including more power for local authorities to set rules governing e-cars and phasing out the sales tax exemption. “The incentives were always meant to be temporary,” he said, “just until we achieved a certain market share.” Some critics say Norway is not getting its money’s worth from the program. Anders Skonhoft, an environmental economist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, estimates that the total value of subsidies works out to about $13,500 a year per electric car over each vehicle’s life. But for all the money Norway has put into the program, he said in an interview, the country has cut its carbon dioxide emissions by no more than one-tenth of one percent. If the main goal is clearing up unhealthy pollutants at the local level, Mr. Skonhoft said, it would make more sense to discourage the use of diesel engines. But he noted that Norway, like many other European governments, effectively subsidizes diesel fuel by taxing it at a lower level than regular gasoline. As for greenhouse gases, he said, it would be more effective, and cost far less, simply to impose a carbon tax, discouraging use of traditional cars by requiring drivers to pay more to pollute more. Mr. Lunde acknowledged that “there’s a discussion of whether it’s too expensive.” But, he said, “it’s difficult to criticize in economic terms, because the value of clean air in the city center is difficult to quantify.” Ms. Bu, of the electric vehicle association, said her group hoped that the incentives would last long enough to change the way people think about transportation. “If we can continue like this until 2020, we will change the car industry,” she said. And proponents say one near-term spark to e-car sales could be the Volkswagen scandal, in which the German company outfitted 11 million cars — including nearly 150,000 in Norway — with software meant to deceive emissions testers.
By excluding electric cars from its 25% sales and registration taxes, Norway has exceeded its original projections to replace petrol engines with electrics. Depending on the vehicle, this tax can exceed $12,000 upon purchase. The country had expected 50,000 of its 66,000 registered private vehicles to run on electricity by 2017; instead, it hit 2.5 million last month, in addition to 8,000 gasoline-electric hybrids. Furthermore, over 95% of the country's electricity is produced by hydropower, which, according to the NY Times, “…makes Norway’s electricity cleaner and relatively cheap -- a further impetus for adopting e-cars. (A country where much of the electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants would not see as many environmental benefits from switching to electric vehicles.)”