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Tesla’s slashing prices. Ford just cut the price of its Mustang Mach-E, too, plus it cut back production of its electric pickup. And General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids.

No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on::Tesla has been slashing prices. Ford just cut the price of its Mustang Mach-E, too, plus it cut back production of its electric pickup. And General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids, arguably a step back from EVs.

  • abhibeckert@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4712·
    9 months ago

    Norway has a range of subsidies worth up to half the price of the vehicle and home upgrades plus tax exemptions worth another 25% on top of that.

    Which can mean a brand new EV is the same price as an old secondhand ICE.

    Incentives like that are a lot easier your entire national population is smaller than some cities.

    • espentan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      212·
      9 months ago

      I only meant to say that many of the things that might put people off buying electric cars, like range concerns etc. can be alleviated.

      Even with subsidies and incentives it was slow going in the beginning, before people gained trust in the infrastructure and realized electric could be a real and practical alternative.

      I didn’t mean to be an asshole, sorry.

    • FischEnglish
      91·
      9 months ago

      How does a smaller population make it easier to pay those incentives? Less people also means less tax income and vice versa

      • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        21·
        9 months ago

        Tax rates in general are higher there, and not all taxation scales with population (corporate tax, for instance). It also depends on how the government allocates the money it spends—Norway doesn’t have the US’s ridiculously inflated military budget.

        • FischEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          The issue is how the US is spending tax money then and not the population

      • SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        21·
        9 months ago

        Country size has a huge impact on the ability to make sweeping changes to infrastructure and public opinion. A country the size of one US state can do whatever they want and it’s not going to take 50 years to implement.

        South Korea has broadband everywhere? Sure, they are a rich country the size of Indiana and lacing all of that fiber is trivial compared to the entire land mass of the US, or worse, Russia or China. Governmental demands scale much differently the larger the country, and tax doesn’t scale in a 1:1 manner to its land mass.

        • FischEnglish
          21·
          9 months ago

          If you want to make changes like that, you tell each state they’re supposed to e.g. upgrade everyone to fiber and then the local government of each state handles it. I thought that was the whole point of having those states.

    • kalleboo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      Incentives like that are a lot easier your entire national population is smaller than some cities.

      Maybe you should split your country up into smaller, independent regions that can govern more effectively.

      You could call them “States”

    • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Incentives like that are a lot easier …

      I don’t buy this logic at all. A larger population also means a much larger taxpayer base, so it evens out. US can offer incentives like this but chooses not to. Half the population seems to feel threatened by any incentives. Then going down to state levels: some states do offer additional incentives and some don’t. The population size isn’t an economical difference, it’s a political difference