Car dealership calls for more tax concessions on hybrid cars Loop Barbados

Black Immigrant Daily News

The managing director of a local car dealership has voiced that the tax break on hybrid vehicles needs to be expanded to include larger cars.

Roger Moore of Nassco Ltd stated he would like to see more incentives for hybrid vehicles during the Smart Energy 2030 webinar, themed Electric Vehicles 101, hosted by the Ministry of Energy and Business today, November 22.

We are going in the right direction, the only problem is getting the quantities

In April this year, the Government announced that it will be lowering the excise tax on electric vehicles for two years. The tax holiday was later extended to hybrids, taking effect from August.

However, Moore argued today the break was not enough. He pointed out that the duties on large hybrid vehicles remained high.

“No concessions were given for the RAV4 apart from the import duty which is 35 per cent across the board on hybrid vehicles but because the RAV4 has 2500 cc engine, cost on that will be very high and it still puts it into a higher tax bracket. So, it makes the RAV4 hybrid a lot more expensive so much that you really can’t say you are saving anything because the cost is so high,” explained the managing director of Nassco.

“We are lobbying the Government to see if they can look at that and ensure that the electric vehicles will fall into that same category which because of the bigger engine sizes, the cost might be a little more,” he continued.

Nevertheless, Moore reported that there has been major interest in hybrids since the concession took place on August 1.

“Since then, the sale of hybrid vehicles has been going very very well. We sold about 25 hybrid vehicles between August and September, because customers were waiting to see what relief they would have gotten, I think there is a place in the market for hybrid vehicles. A lot of the queries we are getting from customers are things like in terms of the power.

Unfortunately, importers have been unable to meet the demand due to supply issues. Moore indicated that he hoped this will be fixed by 2023.

“We are going in the right direction, the only problem is getting the quantities. We are hoping that in 2023 we will see the manufacturers getting the chips and stuff that they need in order to get these vehicles because the demand is so much higher than the supply,” he added.

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