If you want to buy a new car and live in the Netherlands, you may soon have to go EV.
Well, within the next decade, anyway.
A motion recently passed in the lower house of the Dutch Parliament would ban sale of non-electric vehicles – including hybrids which are now popular in the Netherlands – by 2025. The legislation would still need to pass the Senate. If that were the case, then only those gas-powered vehicles that are the road prior to the law would be allowed to be on Dutch roads – any new vehicles sold in the country would have to be EVs.
SEE ALSO: Tesla’s New Netherlands Factory Includes Indoor Test Track
The Netherlands is already a strong market for electrified vehicles, including hybrids. Dutch citizens bought 43,000 new electrified vehicles last year, and electrified vehicles make up almost 10 percent of the Netherlands’ market. The Netherlands is second in the world for electrified-vehicle market share, behind Norway (22 percent), and well ahead of the U.S., which has a 0.66 percent market share.
SEE ALSO: Netherlands Team Aims For All-Time Nürburgring Record and Le Mans Win
These numbers include hybrids, which make up a large part of the Netherlands’ electrified-vehicle fleet. As an example, the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid accounted for nearly 30 percent of Dutch electrified-vehicle sales between 2009 and 2015, while the Tesla Model S, a pure EV, made up just over 5 percent of sales during the same time frame. This is key, since hybrids would no longer be allowed should the ban pass.
The motion was introduced by the Dutch Labour Party, with an opposing party, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, calling it “overambitious and unrealistic.”
The Netherlands is home to the world’s first solar road, and it also has a huge cycling culture, so it’s perhaps not shocking that the Dutch would propose such a motion. The country has also set a goal of getting 14 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020, with another goal of 16 percent by 2023.
The post The Netherlands to Consider Banning Non-EVs appeared first on HybridCars.com.
