Italy will subsidize up to €6,000 ($6,640 at current exchange rates) for the purchase of a new electric vehicle as part of a plan to support the country’s automotive industry.
The Italian government has set aside €8.7 billion ($9.6 billion) through 2030 to pay for the subsidies, which includes €700 million ($775 million USD) in 2022 to encourage consumers to buy new electric vehicles, sources told Reuters.
In order to qualify for the full subsidy, however, the vehicle must cost less than €35,000 ($38,733) and €2,000 ($2,213) of the incentive is linked to the buyer scrapping a combustion engine vehicle.
Read Also: U.S. Senate Panel Advances New EV Tax Credit Bill, Could Be As High As $12,500
The country will also offer subsidies for buyers who opt to go for a hybrid vehicle and even for vehicles that feature the latest, most efficient combustion engines. Buyers of the former could get up to €2,500 ($2,767) whereas the latter are eligible for incentives of up to €1,250 ($1,383) when an older, more polluting car is scrapped.
Italy joins the U.S. and other countries in offering buyers incentives for buying new vehicles with modern, less polluting drivetrains. The American government has run afoul of its trading partners, though, for proposing greater incentives on vehicles made domestically by unionized workforces.
The Italian Minister for Ecological Transition was recently in talks with the European Union to create exemptions from the proposed 2035 bans of internal combustion engines for its low-volume supercar manufacturers. The minister argued that those automakers were too small to switch to electrification as quickly as volume manufacturers. Porsche, however, disagreed with that proposal.
“Electric in the next decade will be unbeatable,” Porsche CEO Oliver Blume said. “De-carbonization is a global question and everybody has to contribute.”
