YOU DON’T SAY: Electric Cars Are Still, Generally, a Plaything of the Wealthy.

Even in the Europe Union, members of which punish drivers of fossil fuel-powered vehicles with high taxes, EVs amounted to just 2 percent of new vehicles registered last year. And yet the EU plans to drastically cut down on greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years.

New data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) shows that the EU’s green dreams will be hard to realize without some sort of massive incentive for the purchase of electric vehicles, as right now those vehicles are only marginally popular in extremely wealthy countries. The EV “people’s car” is still a dream.

The report shows an EV take rate of less than 1 percent in half of the EU’s member states. The lower a country’s per capita GDP, the lower the take rate.

Only two European countries that boast an EV market share above 5 percent are Sweden and the Netherlands. Finland clears the 3.5 percent mark. What all three countries have in common is a per capita GDP greater than $47,000. Those sub-1-percenters? They all have per capita GDPs below $32,500.

ACEA’s findings show that more than 80 percent of the EU’s electric vehicle sales originate in just six countries, all of them wealthy.

Plus: “If governments try to legislate away the existence of ICE-powered vehicles, they just might find themselves facing an angry, carless society. The solution, according to the ACEA, is more government intervention.“

The solution to big, stupid government is always more big, stupid government.