This is the direct result of what happens when similar specced petrol cars are just way more expensive (taxes) than electric cars.
So if any government wants to embrace the use of ecars, this is one way to do it! Governments of countries with a healthy car industry would be hesitant to do this though.
As a fan of Tesla I'm still skeptical whether tax incentives are the way to go - the reason is that I'm not yet convinced that battery powered cars are a sustainable way to replace all the petrol powered ones.
In general it seems to me that internalizing all costs of transport is the way to go. This would mean higher fuel costs, possibly slightly higher cost of electric vehicles and also higher cost of public transport. There should be a clear incentive for people to move as close as possible to where they work, or to work from home. Some incentives to steer the economy in that direction could be helpful at first, for example subsidizing company housing or directly subsidizing people to move close to their job (the higher amount, the closer the family moves), offsetting high rent in places with lots of work.
My issue with tax incentives is that they are given without regard to income level of the buyers. I do not believe tax incentives should be given to the companies that produce the cars, only to the public who buys them and then only weighed against income level.
Get the middle class into these electrics, if the rich want them there is no reason the middle class should subsidize their purchase
Be careful with that line of reasoning. Rich people respond to tax incentives more than the middle class in a lot of respects (because they have more economic freedom), and some of the draw for the upper middle class is that the Tesla is a rich person's car/status symbol.
Making the rich move back to MB S-class and Porsche 911s and you take away at least part of the allure for the numerically larger upper-middle class.
Plus, realistically, do you really want to differentially encourage a $75 K/yr household to buy a car that's not economically rational/healthy for them to buy? You want more Teslas on the road via incentives? You have to give the incentives to the people who can afford them...
But non provide the same level of tax disincentive to buy a large IC engine cars that Norway does. You really need both the carrot and the stick if you want to see significant change.
Cars are taxed based on price, engine size and environmental factors. The end result is that mid to high end gas cars with a big engine can easily cost 3 times as much in Norway as elsewhere, and some models are modified to be delivered with smaller engines in Norway to reduce the tax.
And then what happens is that people buy cars from neighboring countries and register them there. Happens here in Romania. A lot of people (overall a small percentage of all the cars on the road, true), register their cars in Bulgaria. Especially from Bucharest easy it's - just a 60km drive to the nearest Bulgarian town where the car can be registered/serviced.
Very rarely in Norway. If you're stopped at a routine traffic stop with a Norwegian drivers license, driving a foreign-registered car, the police will expect you to be able to show customs documents from the border to document that the car has been registered on entry. If you can't do that, or if the car was imported more than 30 days ago, you're in for a world of hurt. For most people it's not worth the risk
So if any government wants to embrace the use of ecars, this is one way to do it! Governments of countries with a healthy car industry would be hesitant to do this though.