In case anyone's curious, while Iceland is a relatively small market, our government has been taking a strong stand on electric cars, and we fluctuate between #2 and #3 in Europe in EV sales as a share of total vehicle sales (Norway is of course #1). Some of the more recent news:
Breytir byggingareglugerð vegna rafbíla
Summary: they're looking to change building regulations to require all new construction to be ready for EV charger installation. Quote from the environment minister:
In order to do so, of course, we need infrastructure, not just roads. We need to be able to charge these cars, these electric cars, and we must assume their presence in the building code, that new construction has this infrastructure. And just like we have assumed in the building code that it's necessary to pipe water to houses, this is the new reality and we need to react to it, and I intend to pursue this path.
Umhverfisráðherra stefnir að því rafbílar taki yfir innan þrettán ára - Visir
Title: "Environment Minister targets electric cars taking over within 13 years"
First paragraphs:
The policy is that the entire car fleet in Iceland will be electric- and methane powered before 2030, in order to react to climate change. This is according to Björt Ólafsdóttir, environmental minister, in an interview with RÚV this evening.
The minister considers electric cars to be the primary weapon of Icelanders in the struggle against climate change. She points to the abundance of green energy which Icelanders have which is possible to use to drive an electric car fleet with.
„We have all of this green energy and in our action plan concerning climate change we're targeting to spread electric and methane cars to replace the entire vehicle fleet,“ said Björt in the evening news on RÚV this evening.
The last policy confirmed by parliament was to have the vehicle fleet only 40% powered by renewable energy by 2030. This would be a much more aggressive target.
The first article is from June, the second just a week ago.
The short of it: it looks like the current incentive - that EVs below 6m ISK ($57k) can continue to deduct VAT (24% of total purchase price) and don't get charged any vörugjald (a fee based on emissions, can be as high as 65% of the total purchase price) will not be disappearing any time soon - if anything, we may see some even more aggressive moves to electrify.
ON (Orka Náttúrunnar) is scheduled to complete a ring of CHAdeMOs around the country at 100km intervals by the end of this year. It's yet to be seen when Tesla plans to enter the market, however. Previous owners were anecdotally told by Tesla that they'd come here after 100 sales (there's something like 70 Teslas in the country currently). I'm not sure how much stock I'd put in that. Despite having high per-capita EV sales, Tesla sales have been low due to the 6m ISK limit on the VAT deduction and the lack of accessible sales and service infrastructure. The former limit will not apply to the Model 3, but obviously Tesla needs to actually come here if they don't want to cede our market to competitors.
Anecdotally: Model 3 seems to be getting a lot of interest. The population density here is low, so Icelanders love range. Safety is also big, as we have a long, wet winter with dangerous road conditions; Tesla's reputation in this regard is a big selling point. The press has also run a number of positive articles about people who imported Teslas and drive them around the country. That said, the main negative I hear is concerns about ground clearance. I don't know how much that will hurt Tesla. If they don't offer a tow hook that will probably also hurt them a bit, as towing small trailers is fairly popular.
General stats about the Iceland market.
Population: 344k (6,5% of Norway)
Tourists per year: Around 2 million (1 million visited between January and June this year); 2m is 56% of Norway's annual tourism.
Vehicles per capita: 0.745 (5th in the world - US is 3rd, Norway 17th)
Per-capita income: Was about 50k in 2016, but our currency has
spiked since then; we're probably now in the top 10 globally.
Gas prices: nearly $8 USD/gal (3rd in the world)
Residential electricity is generally $0.10-0.15/kWh. Commercial electricity is dirt cheap; we basically export electricity by importing aluminum ore and exporting refined aluminum.