Costly to own a car for those who cannot easily use an electric one
Nordic Mobility Clubs (Norges Automobil-Forbund) visited NHH to have discussions about cars, car policy and research on these matters.
Both interesting policy and data have contributed to quite a lot of well-published research on cars in Norway lately, and Øyvind Thomassen, Morten Sæthre and Gunnar S. Eskeland presented both findings and views, to initiate discussions.
Norway now has more than 90 percent fully electric cars in new car sales, and an important message from the researchers is that this is because of very strong policies:
High registration taxes differentiated by CO2 intensity (fuel efficiency, basically) and very generous exemptions for 'zero emission vehicles' do deliver emission reductions, but at high costs compared to CO2-quota prices in Europe, at a cost of revenue in government budgets, and with distributional implications: it becomes costly to own a car for those who cannot easily use an electric one.
Øyvind's and Morten's research also include such questions as local air quality improvements, market power and producer surplus. In Norway, other policies include toll rings, differentiated for electric cars, and by rushour, and subsidies to public transport and bicycle lanes.
In the discussions, similarities and differences between nordic's were highlighted, and one common theme was that in all these countries, the automobile clubs feel that it will not be easy for government to give up budgetary revenues from auto owners and users (as with sales of ice vehicles and gasoline).
This could mean that odometer-based fees on road users will reemerge. Another theme was whether some Nordic coordination would be promising, and that - if so - the Norwegian experiments are not the only ones worth learning from.