This paper is concerned with incentives for the take-up and use of e-vehicles that are in place in different European countries. Especially, it analyses Norway and Austria, in order to establish and understand factors influencing the competitiveness of e-vehicles and potential market penetration. Norway currently enjoys the world’s largest take-up of electric cars per capita, achieved through an extensive package of incentives. Austria has used the concept of Model Regions with government support to stimulate market introduction. So far, this has been a less effective approach. The paper brings in and combine analyses of national travel survey data and web surveys to e-vehicle owners and non-e-vehicle owners. It considers socio-economic factors including convenience and time savings due to e-vehicle policies. Analysing national travel surveys, we find a considerable potential for e-vehicles based on people’s everyday travel. Social networks play a crucial role in spreading knowledge about this relatively new technology. The take-up of battery electric vehicles correlates relatively closely with the user value of e-vehicle incentives. The fiscal effects of e-vehicle incentives are non-trivial – especially in the longer run. The cost of lifting a new technology into the market by means of government incentives is significant. We point to the importance of a strategy for the gradual phasing out of e-vehicle policies in countries with large incentives when the cost of vehicles goes down and the technology improves. Successful market uptake and expansion of electric vehicles requires massive, expensive and combined policies. Central government backing, long term commitment and market-oriented incentives help reduce the perceived risk for market players like car importers and allow the e-vehicle market to thrive. For countries with low e-vehicle market shares the potential is promising. Battery electric vehicles are already a real option for the majority of peoples’ everyday trips and trip chains. However, their relative disadvantages must be compensated by means of incentives – at least in the initial market launch phase. Diffusion mechanisms play a sizeable role. The lack of knowledge in the population at large must be addressed.

Systems Dynamics (SD) was founded by John Forrester and colleagues in the late 1950s at the MIT. SD offers qualitative and quantitative tools to analyse systems. The major qualitative method is Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs). CLDs facilitate the description, communication and discussion of any kind of system. CLDs allow statements about the principal system behaviour, i.e. whether a state of dynamic equilibrium can be reached or not. CLDs can form the basis for quantitative dynamic modelling. The major quantitative SD principles are stocks and flows. Qualitative and quantitative methods have been used to develop the dynamic land use and transport interaction model MARS (Metropolitan Activity Relocation Simulator). Operational models exist in 14 European, Asian and South American cities. Versions of Washington DC and Ho Chi Minh City are under development. An interface called ‘flight simulator’ which allows to select policies from a predefined set, run the model and calculate the effects of the selected policy accompanies MARS. The flight simulator tool was used in workshops with politicians, planners and researchers in Vietnam and Brazil. The aim of this paper is to discuss the potential of an SD‐based approach to bridge the gap between politics, planning and science.

For many years Norway has been in the forefront of promoting electromobility. Today, Norway has the world’s highest per capita fleet of plug-in electric cars. In 2021, 1.6% of the cars in the EU fleet were plug-in electric vehicles, whereas their share was 21% in Norway. Part of the successful market take-up rate is due to wide-ranging tax exemptions. Increasing plug-in electric vehicles numbers causes tax revenue losses, making exemptions unsustainable. Norway has the ambitious goal that from 2025, all newly registered cars shall be zero-emission vehicles. Keeping tax exemptions in place might be crucial for this goal. The objective of this paper is to provide information to solve this dilemma. Tax exemption reduction and abolition paths which offer a compromise between minimal effects on the development of zero-emission vehicles and tax revenues have been identified. An updated and re-calibrated version of the stock-flow-model SERAPIS was used to simulate and assess different scenarios. Results show that a controlled tax phase-in allows Norway to reach its environmental targets of 100% zero emission vehicles by 2025 and a 55% decrease of CO₂-emissions in 2030 relative to 2005 while simultaneously increasing public revenues significantly.