Help needed: Importing a US Roadster to Europe (Switzerland)

[TEG]

No, the ones I heard about were done in an effort to save money. Some of the eBay auctions that went for $75K for instance.
But after all the fees for shipping, modification, re-certification, and such, it starts to become less attractive.

 

[dpeilow]

Re the possible defrauding of the US taxpayer: If the objective of the scheme is to get one more EV on the road, does it matter where in the world it is?

 

[bonnie]

Re the possible defrauding of the US taxpayer: If the objective of the scheme is to get one more EV on the road, does it matter where in the world it is?

Yes. It matters to me, since it is my tax dollars. Many incentive programs have already run out of funds or cut the amount that is paid (California reduced from max of $5K to $2500 this year, Colorado had huge incentives early on that are now gone). To me, that translates to less EVs on the road in the US, which 1) means that EV in another part of the world is not an additional sale, but only a replacement for a sale that would have occurred with incentives available, and 2) ultimately translates to less support for building up the infrastructure.

And let's not talk about the carbon footprint of flying a car back and forth around the world.

 

[bonnie]

And I guess my biggest concern is one I stated earlier - when people game the incentive system, it will very likely end up as part of someone's anti-ev blog, along the lines of "see, those liberalenvironmentalistglobalwarmingvegetarians are misusing YOUR tax dollars". That hurts all of us.

 

[S-2000 Roadster]

Re the possible defrauding of the US taxpayer: If the objective of the scheme is to get one more EV on the road, does it matter where in the world it is?

For this particular legislation, it does matter. They took the time to spell out that it was intended for cars used in the U.S. Now, if folks here really wanted to encourage EV all over the world, then we could petition our government to write a new incentive or perhaps rewrite the old one. Until then, it's really not fair for a few people to pretend like a car is being used in the U.S. just to get this money.

We've already subsidized enough European biodiesel to the tune of $1 per gallon, including the same shipping back and forth from continent to continent. That's enough global perspective for my tax dollar. I'd rather not see the huge EV incentives leave the country as well.

 

[ChadS]

Re the possible defrauding of the US taxpayer: If the objective of the scheme is to get one more EV on the road, does it matter where in the world it is?

If the US tax incentives were only to lower CO2 emissions, you would have a really good case that it doesn't matter where the car is.

But the incentives are meant to solve other problems too. Particulate emissions, for example, stay more local than CO2 and are causing US asthma, pneumonia and death, so the US money is meant to result in fewer particles here (not that I personally don't care about children and the elderly breathing particulates elsewhere, but that's how tax incentives work). Similarly, buying local electricity rather than foreign oil helps the economy and national security of the country that the car is driven in; so again it matters where the car is.

The kind-of funny thing is that [almost] every country has the same concerns and same reasons to switch to electric; it's just that each country wants their own dollars solving the problem in their own area. It does make you wonder if there's an approach to solving these problems that would be wider in scope. But to the extent that tax dollars, economies and national security are separate, this will probably always be an issue.