The federal government of Costa Rica has recently announced that the proposed tax breaks and other incentives that EV’s will likely enjoy in the near future will not be extended to some other types of hybrid vehicles.
Bill #19,744, known as the “Bill to Promote the Use of Electric Vehicles in Costa Rica”, was designed to support the use of electric cars, but some legislators have been trying to expand the reach of the law to include more than just EV’s.
This has been met with resistance, and as the situation stands now it looks like the efforts to push the regulations to include non 100% EV’s will have been in vain.
One of the issues that has been brought up is the state of the infrastructure in Costa Rica, and the need for more EV friendly support technologies to be built before more kinds of cars are included in the program.
Liliana Aguilar Rojas, Executive Director of the Association of Vehicle and Equipment Importers, spoke out in front of the legislative committee last Wednesday; she feels that if companies are going to bring more electric vehicles into the country, there needs to be more charging stations.
“Electric and hydrogen cars received a tax cut in 2006, and that did not encourage massive importation,” Aguilar added, then stating that since 2010 only 1,100 electric cars have been imported into Costa Rica.
Clearly this law needs to really give the Costa Ricans a real incentive to get into an EV.
Around 2 million vehicles are legally registered in Costa Rica, according to figures from the National Registry and well over 90 % of the those cars run on either gasoline or diesel.
This is a situation that need to change, and unlike many countries Costa Rica is taking measures to make badly needed investments in green technology happen.
In 2006 Costa Rica passed the first law in its history with the goal of bringing clean automotive technologies into its borders. These reforms allow EV’s to pay 17.41% in taxes and for plug-in hybrids to pay 29.04 percent.
Costa Rican EV tax rates represent a large break from normal cars, as taxes comprise 52.29 percent of a petroleum fueled car’s price.
The current bill wants to reduce the economic impact of high EV prices, which the legislature sees as the biggest thing keeping consumers from buying green. This will be accomplished by making new electric and some types hybrid cars fully exempt from sales, selective consumption and customs taxes.
Clearly this sort of political movement is a great step in the right direction, and we need to see more countries adopting similar legislation.
[via ticotimes]
