"The great interest in the purchase of electric vehicles is very positive," Minister of the Environment Rene Kokk (EKRE) said in a press release. "We decided to increase the amount available in the first application round from the amount originally planned, and will find additional funds for the second round as well. We hope to open the second round before summer still."

KIK director Andrus Treier said that interest was indeed great and not all applications filed in the first round were accepted. In the second round, he noted, those whose applications were unsuccessful in the first round will have to file a new application and an entirely new queue of applications will be formed.

Parties whose applications were granted in the first round included 40 businesses and 15 individuals. Ten companies received support for the acquisition of 15 vehicles, including Eleport OÜ, Telia Eesti AS and Elmo Rent OÜ. Clients of the driving school Haja Autokool OÜ will soon be able to take driving lessons with 15 brand new electric vehicles. Eurostauto OÜ will also make ten electric vehicles available as substitute vehicles.

Tesla Rent OÜ will soon make ten cars acquired with the subsidy available for rent. In total, 16 companies received support for the acquisition of one electric vehicle each. These include crematorium operator Tallinna Krematooriumi AS, which will introduce an electric vehicle as the urn-carrying vehicle at funerals.

The sum disbursed under the first application round will be used for the purchase of 69 Nissan Leafs, 33 Hyundai Kona Electric vehicles, 31 Renault Zoe vehicles, 22 Volkswagen E-UP vehicles, 17 Skoda CITIGOe vehicles, 16 Peugeot 208 GT Electric vehicles, 16 Tesla Model 3 vehicles, 15 Hyundai Ioniq vehicles, 10 Nissan e-NV20 vehicles,and one Audi e-tron, Kia e-Niro and Mini Cooper each.

Eight subsidy recipients have agreed to install a GPS device in their vehicles. The rest are prepared to submit mileage information for their vehicles until reaching a mileage of 80,000 kilometers, and make it available for inspection within two days at the request of KIK.

€5,000 subsidies

Applications in the first round began at 9 a.m. on January 17, and were closed by 1 p.m. the same day due to overwhelming interest. In that time, a total of 85 applications for the purchase of 297 vehicles were filed for the total amount of €1.485 million.

At the end of January, the Ministry of the Environment decided to utilize the full budget of the subsidy program for the purchase of electric vehicles in the first application round and find additional funds for the second round.

Eligible for a €5,000 subsidy is the the purchase of a fully electric M1 or N1 (passenger car or van) category vehicle costing up to €50,000 exclusive of VAT. Vehicles purchased with the subsidy must run a mileage of at least 80,000 kilometers in four years, at least 80 percent of which is in Estonia.

A total of €1.2 million has been earmarked for the Ministry of the Environment-developed program, which will be funded from the proceeds of EU carbon emissions auctions.

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