Evaluating Norway’s electric vehicle incentives

Abstract

We use product-level data from 2000 to 2021 to evaluate Norway’s incentives for consumers to choose electric vehicles. These include taxes on fossil fuels, EV exemption from car purchase taxes, and other incentives, like discounts on road tolls. We find that undoing the incentive with the largest effect, the EV exemption from purchase taxes, would reduce the EV market share to 25 percent from the 66 percent observed in 2021, increase CO2 emissions of new cars sold by 170 percent, reduce their total weight by 22 percent, and reduce the number of new cars sold by 10 percent.