Electric cars selling like hot cakes
The electric car fleet in Iceland is growing every month. This fall a rise in sales were expected due to tha pening VAT tax that will be issued at the end of the year. mbl.is/Árni Sæberg
Icelandic car dealerships are currently cleaning out electric cars, but by the end of the year, prices will rise markedly when VAT will be applied to them.
According to Brimborg CEO Egill Jóhannesson, electric car sales have increased by 89% in September from the same month last year. Electric cars are now the majority of sales and in the last three months they account for more than 70% of the overall sales.
The same situation is at Askja car dealership says the CEO Jón Trausti Ólafsson, who says they have been very busy and mostly because of electric car sales.
“These changes that are coming up have clearly pushed quite a few people to buy an electric car before the end of the year,” Ólafsson tells Morgunblaðið. He says that Askja has had stored a good number of electric cars, as it was known for quite some time that the VAT would be levied at the end of the year.
“We expected that this autumn would be a good time for electric car sales. This is a very rapid change and we think the increase will be almost 1.4 million ISK above the purchase price of electric cars, which we think is very high,” he says.
A big increase between years
According to Ólafsson, 4,687 electric cars were sold to individuals and businesses in the first nine months of the year, and then he is referring to the overall sales in Iceland.
Last year, 3,232 electric cars were sold which accounts for 51.7% of car sales. At the same time, the share of plug-in hybrid vehicles fell from 19.7% to 13.1%. As for total sales of car-rental vehicles, Ólafsson says that the share of electric cars was 7.9% last year, but has risen to 16.8% this year.
“We can see from these figures that sales of electric cars have increased markedly this year, and the share of sales of electric cars to rental cars has about doubled, but is still only a small percentage of total sales of electric cars. Just in September, 751 electric cars were sold, up from 634 in 2021.”
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