OREANDA-NEWS. The Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation is ready to discuss the benefits or mass abolition of the transport tax for light electric vehicles in the event of large-scale production.

"If Elon Musk or other manufacturers, including ours, decide on more ambitious projects in the field of passenger electric vehicles," said the head of the ministry Denis Manturov.

The task of the ministry in this case "will be to create a charging infrastructure, first of all it will require the support of colleagues from the Ministry of Energy, and stimulating regulatory mechanisms - for example, we will discuss and resolve the issue of transport tax," the minister said in an interview with Arguments and Facts ".

But so far in Russia there is no mass demand to reduce the cost of electric cars and introduce benefits for the production and owners of electric cars. "Even electric buses are used only in large agglomerations, because it is still expensive," he said.

Transport tax - regional destination and regional authorities make a decision. So, in 2019, owners of electric cars in Moscow were exempted from transport tax.

Experts are confident that the demand for electric cars would be even higher if it were not for the high cost of green vehicles. According to Andrey Dolgov, manager of the electric car salon, new electric cars cost 10-12 million rubles, and now most Russian citizens can hardly afford to buy a car worth more than 3 million rubles.