The Association of Car Importers Malta (ACIM) has not been given any guarantees that the grants scheme for the purchase of new electric vehicles will continue into 2025, its secretary general has told Times of Malta.
For quite some time, car importers and their salespeople have been warning potential buyers that the current subsidies on electric vehicles may not be given beyond the end of this year.
Deborah Schembri, ACIM secretary general, said that government entities, including Transport Malta, would only give them an assurance of subsidies for owners of EVs registered until the end of 2024.
This is regardless of whether the EU-allocated funding would have been utilised in full or not.
“Given the government’s commitment, November and December purchases for cars that manage to be registered by the end of the year should be covered,” she said.
Budget 'still in the works'
Finance Minister Clyde Caruana confirmed that EU funds allocated for the purchase of new electric vehicles “have already been fully taken up and the government has had to finance the scheme, through the rest of the year, by utilising national funds.”
However, Caruana stopped short of providing clarity on whether the government would continue offering incentives from its own budget into next year, saying only that the 2025 budget is “still in the works”.
A kitty worth almost €50 million of EU funds, made available through the Recovery and Resilience Plan and issued in tranches of €15 million annually, was consumed over a period of three years between 2022 and 2024.
Schembri said ACIM has asked the government to retain incentives for EV purchases that are “as close as possible to the current incentive structure”.
Additionally, she believes that hybrid vehicles “should also benefit from some sort of incentives because they too help in the reduction of emissions”.
Ten years of subsidies
Malta has been offering EV subsidy schemes for almost a decade.
Originally, plug-in-hybrid cars were eligible for subsidies as well. These were removed fairly recently while the grants on fully electric vehicles increased significantly.
Aided by the EU’s RRP, subsidies for fully electric vehicles were increased from €9,000 to €12,000 in 2022.
Incentives have been provided equally to private individuals, registered companies and partnerships, local councils, registered NGOs, self-employed individuals and cooperatives.
Additionally, electric vehicles are exempt from the payment of registration tax and annual licence fees for the first five years.
Motorists deregistering older vehicles running on conventional fuel benefit from an additional €1,000.
Petrol remains king
According to NSO figures, by the end of June 2024, there were 14,924 fully electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles in Malta and Gozo. This equates to just 3.4 per cent of the total motor vehicle stock on Maltese roads.
The number of licensed electric vehicles decreased by 14.2% in the second quarter of this year.
Petrol-powered engines remain by far the most popular, with 257,483 on the roads, while diesel-powered vehicles amount to 156,347.
Between April and June this year, the number of plug-in hybrid (diesel) vehicles increased by 22.2%; mild hybrid (diesel) vehicles increased by 8%; and mild-hybrid (petrol) increased by 5.8%.