Swiss car import regulations are harmful to the environment

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In order for Switzerland to meet its climate targets, our cars must become more environmentally friendly. Road traffic is responsible for 40 percent of our CO₂ emissions. While electric vehicles have long been in the fast lane in countries such as Norway and the Netherlands, the share of purely electric cars is only slowly increasing here.

Very different in Norway. Nowhere else in Europe are there so many electric vehicles on the road. That is no coincidence: until recently there was no VAT of 25 percent when purchasing an electric car. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, it becomes expensive if a new car with a combustion engine is purchased.

Lots of meshes

In Switzerland people are satisfied with fines for importing less environmentally friendly cars and vans, as they are also known in the EU. A limit is set for the CO₂ emissions of imported vehicles, in 2021 this was 118 grams of CO₂ per kilometer. If the emissions are higher, the importers have to pay a fine. They probably pass this on to the consumer.

In practice, however, there are numerous loopholes. You should know that the target values ​​apply to entire fleets. That’s why automakers are forming emissions communities: The pure electric car maker Tesla teamed up with the traditional producer Fiat Chrysler for 2020 – for a lot of money. At that time there were three cars with internal combustion engines in the joint fleet for one CO₂-free Tesla. As a result, the community has achieved the goal set at the time with pinpoint accuracy.

Legal traffickers and harmful rules

In the meantime, special “car smugglers” have even emerged. Their fully legal business model is the brokerage of low-emission cars to reduce emissions from import fleets. For example, in 2020 only two import fleets were too high for passenger cars. If you convert the fines to individual cars, they are only 0.8 or 3.3 percent more expensive. The incentive to introduce fuel-efficient cars is low.

One of the sanctions rules is even counterproductive, according to a new report from the Swiss Federal Court of Auditors (SFAO). For cars with a combustion engine, the heavier the vehicle, the higher the CO₂ emissions. In order not to disproportionately penalize buyers of larger cars, the weight factor has been softened with higher limits. And here too, importers benefit from the mix with e-cars: because electric vehicles and hybrid cars are heavier than comparable combustion engines, they increase the average weight of a fleet. And with it the CO₂ limit.

The SFAO therefore advises the federal government to exclude electric and hybrid cars from the calculation of the average weight. However, their report mainly shows that Switzerland has missed the boat with the measures taken so far.

Switzerland joins the East

While new cars in Switzerland will emit 130 grams of CO₂ per kilometer in 2021, newly registered cars in Norway will emit less than 30 grams into the air on average. The Netherlands is also doing well. In 2021, the Dutch arrived at about 95 grams of CO₂ per kilometer. Here buyers are deterred by a fine. In concrete terms, according to the SFAO, this has the following effect: The car most imported into Switzerland in 2020 was the Skoda Octavia 2.0 TDI 4×4. When such a diesel car is first registered in the Netherlands, a compensation of 18,000 euros would be due. Solid additional costs for a car that only costs around 35,000 euros.

When buying emission-free cars, however, this allowance is almost completely eliminated in the Netherlands. That has an effect: there are a striking number of electric cars on Dutch roads. But the described Skoda model is practically no longer sold in the Netherlands.

Federal Council wants to tax e-cars

Only Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries are even worse than us in terms of CO₂ emissions. The main reason for this is our purchasing power. You can afford a lot of horsepower, a high vehicle weight and four-wheel drive in this country.

And Switzerland could fall even further behind, as the Bundesrat moves in the opposite direction: it proposes a 4 percent car tax on the import price of electric vehicles from 2024.

Source:Blick