Just recently, russian government has made a decision to stimulate russian people to purchase electric vehicles outside the country and import them without any customs duties.
The validity period for duty free import is from february 1st, 2014 till december 31st, 2015.
Normally people would pay at least around 48% of new vehicle cost in customs duties alone.
This is a big change, and probably will stimulate a lot of vehicle orders from Tesla, especially Model X due to high ground clearance and AWD.
I am wondering if there are plans on making the vehicle interface in russian language (most important navigation and user interface).
Also, in Russia there is a yearly transportation tax which every vehicle owner pays based on engine horsepower. The transportation tax increases dramatically (doubles) once engine horsepower is over 250hp metric.
I am wondering if there are plans on making an engine option for Model S/X in the range of 240hp or so (180 kiloWatts would be perfect).
If such option is available, then I believe Tesla products will be very popular in Russia, at least during this time frame.
Of course opening a Tesla store and service center in Moscow or St-Petersburg would even further increase popularity.
Correction:
Of course, officials say one thing and in reality its quite different
Now the rules are that if a person brings an electric vehicle over, then customs duty is still 48% of the vehicle cost. But if a company imports the vehicle, then there is no customs duty(used to be 19% for EV), however there are other taxes, like VAT (18%) plus 10 bucks for each horsepower. So all in all, for individuals its 48% tax, and for companies its around 30%. Quite different than what the officials claimed - "Duty free import for electric vehicles!"
The validity period for duty free import is from february 1st, 2014 till december 31st, 2015.
Normally people would pay at least around 48% of new vehicle cost in customs duties alone.
This is a big change, and probably will stimulate a lot of vehicle orders from Tesla, especially Model X due to high ground clearance and AWD.
I am wondering if there are plans on making the vehicle interface in russian language (most important navigation and user interface).
Also, in Russia there is a yearly transportation tax which every vehicle owner pays based on engine horsepower. The transportation tax increases dramatically (doubles) once engine horsepower is over 250hp metric.
I am wondering if there are plans on making an engine option for Model S/X in the range of 240hp or so (180 kiloWatts would be perfect).
If such option is available, then I believe Tesla products will be very popular in Russia, at least during this time frame.
Of course opening a Tesla store and service center in Moscow or St-Petersburg would even further increase popularity.
Correction:
Of course, officials say one thing and in reality its quite different
Now the rules are that if a person brings an electric vehicle over, then customs duty is still 48% of the vehicle cost. But if a company imports the vehicle, then there is no customs duty(used to be 19% for EV), however there are other taxes, like VAT (18%) plus 10 bucks for each horsepower
. So all in all, for individuals its 48% tax, and for companies its around 30%. Quite different than what the officials claimed - "Duty free import for electric vehicles!"
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