Saturday, June 27, 2015

Dutch clean vehicle stimulus plans enable strong growth for FEVs and FCVs

Recently the Dutch State Secretary for Finance wrote a letter to parliament containing plans on clean vehicle stimulation for the period 2017-2020. His letter offers great potential for FCV (fuel cell vehicle) sales in the Netherlands. The Netherlands have the lowest average emissions for new vehicles sold in all of Europe thanks to generous stimulation for clean vehicles. Specifically fiscal stimulation is high for lease cars, which has led to plug-in hybrid vehicles becoming the most popular lease cars. This stimulation will remain intact for fully electric vehicles (FEVs) and FCVs, but the stimulation for plug-in hybrid vehicles will be phased out between now and 2019. This will lead to increased demand for FEVs and FCVs.
Starting 2019 however the stimulation for FEVs will only be applied to a sales value upto € 50.000. That will likely lead to a shift from FEVs to FCVs. Luxury FEV manufacturers (current FEV market leader is Tesla) would be wise to offer their models with a FC range extender.
If most of the current luxury FEV sales shift to FCVs in 2019, FCV sales could grow exponentially. A rough estimate of FCV sales:
2013      0
2014      2
2015    10
2016    30
2017  100
2018  300
2019 1.000
2020 1.500