Transport is Switzerland’s single largest emitting sector. Around 14 million tons of CO₂ equivalents per year, more than a third of the national total. And unlike buildings or industry, it has barely improved: transport emissions in 2023 were only 8% below 1990 levels, compared to a decrease of 46% in the building sector. With passenger cars accounting for roughly 77% of all land-based passenger-kilometres,(i.e., the sum of kilometres travelled by all passengers using land-based transport), the car fleet is where the problem sits.
BEVs by now have clear emissions and cost advantages over conventional cars, due to falling battery costs, and Switzerland’s near-zero-carbon electricity grid. The share of plug-in vehicles (BEVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) among new registrations rose to roughly 34% in 2025 (Figure 1). But this falls far short of the 50% target set by the Swiss Electromobility Roadmap for that year. The roadmap has since been extended to 2030, as the original target has not been met.
The cost of delay is real. Every new combustion car sold today will emit CO₂ for decades, as it is typically driven for about 12 years in Switzerland, then exported to Eastern Europe and used until roughly a vehicle age of 28, before often being passed on to Africa, where it runs for many more years. Of Switzerland’s 4.8 million passenger cars, over 93% still run on fossil fuels.
Yet, policymakers have few tools and little appetite for strong interventions. Unlike neighbouring countries, Switzerland does not yet have a direct and additional CO₂ levy on transport fuels. The revised CO₂ Act, weakened through successive parliamentary rounds and a prior referendum defeat, removed most bans and binding targets. In a political culture that prizes market incentives and voter consent, the question is not whether BEVs will eventually dominate, but whether Switzerland will get there fast enough to meet its emission-reduction targets under the Paris Agreement.
What Swiss attitudes tell us about viable EV policy
Given the strong environmental case for EVs and the broad public acknowledgement of climate change as an important issue, are there no popular policy options to accelerate uptake? Drawing on data from the Swiss Mobility Panel, a longitudinal study tracking Swiss residents’ attitudes toward transport policies since 2020 (n = 6000-8000), we find a clear pattern: while stringent measures against combustion cars lack broad support, there are softer policies that enjoy majority backing.
On the stringent end (Figure 2a), 83% of respondents oppose increasing fuel taxes in a binary yes/no choice. A phase-out date for new combustion cars, as currently in place in the EU and likely to spill over to Switzerland, also faces substantial opposition. On the other hand (Figure 2b), most respondents are against abolishing the existing CO2 emissions regulation, which requires importers to pay fines if the average CO₂ emissions of their imported vehicles exceed increasingly strict annual thresholds. In the survey, 57% favour keeping the scheme, while only 21% support abolishing the fines. There is also support for mandating that landlords install charging stations: 43% are somewhat or very much in favour, compared with 35% who are somewhat or very much against.
Beyond policy preferences, public opinion has not kept up with technological progress, which has enabled much-improved economics and carbon footprints compared to a few years ago. Surveys show that potential buyers are deterred by high EV purchase prices, but the purchase price is only part of the total costs. Research has shown that consumers underestimate the total cost of owning a combustion car by more than 50%. Switching to an EV is already cost-beneficial in many cases. The gap between perception and reality is similarly stark when it comes to environmental benefits: a survey by the German Acatech found that half of consumers still doubt the environmental case for BEVs. In contrast, science is clear; BEVs reduce a car’s life-cycle carbon footprint by around three-quarters as of 2025. On average across the EU, the reduction is estimated at 73%, whereas in Switzerland, it is likely closer to 78% due to the high share of clean electricity. This climate calculus still leaves out local health benefits: the European Environment Agency estimates that fine particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) cause 3,100 premature deaths per year in Switzerland.
The good news is that the perceptions of BEVs are improving. In the longitudinal survey by gfs.bern, all stated reasons not to opt for a BEV decreased in relevance over recent years. In 2023, 80% of respondents who did not want a BEV cited concerns about home charging availability, a figure that fell by 11 percentage points in 2025. Similarly, the share worried about electricity supply security dropped from 77% to 62% between 2023 and 2025.
Looking beyond Switzerland, other European countries demonstrate what targeted policy designs can achieve. In the Netherlands, a 2019 framework allowing cities to create zero-emission zones for freight vehicles, combined with the removal of diesel tax exemptions, meant that by 2025, when the first zones were activated, 84% of new van registrations were electric. This is far above the European average of 9%. In Denmark, the BEV share among new registrations reached 82% in February 2026, driven by a registration tax that has long been high for combustion cars but not for EVs, alongside a maturing model offering. And in Germany, changes to electricity market regulation and the removal of levies for stored electricity have made the use of BEVs for grid services much more viable. For example, BMW now remunerates drivers with €720 per year if they plug in regularly, equivalent to free charging for 14,000 km of driving. These policies show that there are still opportunities to boost adoption without relying on outright national bans on combustion cars.
The road ahead for Swiss mobility
Switzerland’s BEV transition is stuck in an uncomfortable middle ground: fast enough to show that change is possible, but too slow to meet climate targets. Our survey data show why policymaking to accelerate the transition is not straightforward either: stringent measures such as increased fuel taxes or registration bans face strong opposition, while public perception lags well behind the environmental and economic case for BEVs.
But the data also points to a way forward. Existing measures, like fleet emission standards or the currently discussed mandate for charging infrastructure in rental homes, enjoy broad public support and could be strengthened. Meanwhile, the steady improvement in consumer attitudes suggests that as experience with BEVs grows, the political space for bolder policy interventions will widen.
