State money for an electric car: €4,000, your old car scrapped and a charger in your condominium

Three different things that all get called a “benefit”

When people talk about electric cars, everything gets lumped together: “there’s no tax on them”, “there’s a refund”, “there’s a subsidy”, “and companies get VAT back too”. Before working anything out, let’s split this into three separate things — they follow different rules, and mixing them up costs money.

First — taxes. A purely electric car falls outside ISV, the tax on first registration, and is exempt from IUC, the annual car tax. This is not a programme or a queue: it is written into the tax codes themselves. There is nothing to ask for, apply for or rush for.

Second — the environmental fund’s payment. Fundo Ambiental is a state fund attached to the Ministry of the Environment. Under the “Mobilidade Verde — Passageiros” programme it pays a private individual €4,000 towards a new electric car. This is the part with a queue: there is a fixed amount of money, applications open in windows, and they are approved by the hour of submission.

Third — money for a charger. The same programme, as a separate type, pays 80% of the charger and 80% of the electrical installation for a parking space in a block of flats. You don’t have to buy a car for this.

What is not on this list is a VAT refund for a private individual. People in the chats talk about “getting the VAT back on an EV” all the time, but that is about companies and the self-employed: the deduction is worked out in their tax affairs and has nothing to do with buying a car for yourself. A private buyer pays VAT as on anything else, and nobody gives it back.

“I can’t say about the tax on bringing one in from another country - no experience, but road tax is 0, VAT refund on buying an EV for companies, for individuals there’s some deduction too, but smaller, apparently. Running costs - my EV costs me about 4 times less than a modest diesel. There are about twice as many chargers as a year ago, feels like. All the new ones going in are fast chargers. Popped into a supermarket yesterday and they’re opening a 12-car station next to the 2-car one they opened two years ago.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

chatlisboa25.02.2023

How much you get and for what

Amounts under the latest notice (AAC n.º 06/2025, second phase, budget €10 million):

— passenger electric car (category M1) — €4,000 for a private individual and €5,000 for a social solidarity institution (IPSS), a transport authority or a municipality. 1,375 payments are set aside for private individuals, 100 for the others; — cargo bike — half the price including VAT, but no more than €1,500 with electric assist and €1,000 without; — electric city bike — half the price, up to €750; — ordinary city bike — half the price, up to €500; — electric motorcycle, moped, tricycle, quadricycle — half the price, up to €1,500; — scooter, monowheel and other personal electric vehicles — half the price, up to €500; — charger in a block of flats — 80% of the charger’s price up to €800 plus 80% of the electrical installation up to €1,000 per parking space.

Half the price is counted including VAT — from what is on the invoice, not from the price before tax.

A private individual gets one payment per type. The types don’t add up in the sense that there won’t be a second car, but you can take a payment for a car and a separate one for a bike: the limit applies within each type.

It is also worth knowing what this round does not cover. Light electric goods vehicles (category N1 vans) are not included — the fund said so directly in its news item about opening applications. They have their own programme, “Mobilidade Verde — Mercadorias”, designed for businesses, mainly small ones. Hybrids, including plug-in hybrids, are not included either: this programme is only about “zero emissions”, that is, 100% electric drive.

The condition where it all falls apart: scrapping your old car

This is the main and most unpleasant requirement: the money for a car is paid only together with scrapping your own old car. Not “you can scrap one”, but you must.

Which car qualifies:

— running on fossil fuel — petrol, diesel, gas; — more than ten years old; — of the same category as the one you are buying, that is, an M1 passenger car; — in your name. This is where people trip up most often: a car registered to your wife, husband or son doesn’t qualify, and an application with such a certificate is rejected. How long it has been yours, though, doesn’t matter — there is no minimum ownership period; — scrapped after 1 January 2023. So if you got rid of your old car the spring before last, the certificate is still valid.

How it’s done. An end-of-life car (here called VFV — veículo em fim de vida) goes not to IMT but to a collection centre or a licensed dismantler. They take the car and its documents, issue a certificate of destruction (certificado de destruição) through the platform of the environment agency APA, give you the original within five working days and send the request to cancel the registration to IMT themselves. The cancellation happens automatically: you don’t need to go and get it separately. You can ask APA or the regional commission CCDR for a list of dismantlers.

How much it costs. Nothing, if the car is complete — the law says plainly that scrapping is free for the owner, even when the car’s market value is zero or negative. It stops being free in two cases: the engine, transmission shaft, gearbox, catalytic converter, control unit or body has been taken out of the car — or extraneous rubbish has been put in it. A car stripped for parts will be taken for a fee.

And a sober thought. A scrapped car is not just a piece of paper but one car fewer in the family. If the old one still runs and could be sold for two or three thousand, the gain from €4,000 is not so obvious: you can’t sell it, only destroy it. That is exactly how you need to do the sum.

In all the years of chat conversations there is no first-hand account of someone scrapping a car for this payment — people ask about it regularly, and the answers are guesses.

The price cap: €38,500 with everything on the invoice

A car above the cap gets no payment, and the cap is counted not by the list price but by the final purchase price: including VAT, all extras and the administrative costs of registration. The fund answers this directly: the full cost with all extras counts.

— €38,500 — an ordinary passenger car; — €55,000 — if the car has more than five seats.

The practical conclusion: an options pack the dealer offers “to round it up” can knock you out of the programme altogether. Here the difference between €38,400 and €38,600 is worth €4,000.

The car must be new. New means nobody has used it before you; a company car, a demonstrator and one “with zero miles from the dealer, but already registered” don’t count as new. Both the first purchase and the first registration must be in your name and after 1 January 2025.

Leasing qualifies, but not every kind: only locação financeira — finance leasing with purchase at the end, a contract of at least 24 months, signed after 1 January 2025; a full copy of the contract and the vehicle handover record are attached to the payment request. Ordinary long-term rental (renting, ALD) doesn’t qualify.

“Well at the very least an EV costs ~10k or more than a comparable non-EV. So you’d have to drive a hell of a lot to make the savings pay off.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

autolife_pt23.08.2026

“Fancy doing something odd - buying myself an EV. I’d take a Tesla 3, but it’s way too big for Portuguese roads and parking. The BYD Dolphin didn’t impress me, SUVs like the Kia EV3 are also too big and wobbly. But I liked the MG4 Urban, now thinking of getting the MG4 Luxury 64kWh LFP.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

autolife_pt22.08.2026

Who can get it and how many times

Under the “passenger car” type the money goes only to private individuals, social solidarity institutions (IPSS), transport authorities and municipalities. An ordinary company doesn’t qualify under this type — it is left with bikes and the other types.

What is needed from you:

— a NIF and the IBAN of an account in your own name — the money arrives by bank transfer; — no debts to the tax office and social security, and you allow the fund to check this. Permission is given right in the application form, no certificates to bring; — one payment per person under this type.

The notice says not a word about residence permits, and formally that is not the point: the requirements are a NIF, an account and a clean tax record. But the car must be registered to you in Portugal, and Portuguese plates are issued to someone who lives here. So in practice you won’t get the payment without local status.

The money comes in windows: how not to miss yours

This is the main thing that sets the payment apart from a tax concession. The programme has a fixed amount of money, and applications open in windows.

How it went:

— first round: the notice came out on 22 December 2025, applications opened on 29 December and ran for 45 days; €17.625 million, including 2,200 payments for private individuals; — second round: notice of 11 June 2026, applications from 11 June to 27 July until 17:59 — 46 days; €10 million, 1,375 payments for private individuals. The notice itself says where this money came from: what wasn’t spent in 2024 and 2025 was carried over to 2026.

Applications close for one of two reasons: the deadline has passed or the payments for your type have run out — whichever comes first. Applications are approved strictly by the date and hour of submission: apply on the first day and you are almost certainly in, apply a month later and it’s down to luck.

How long the window actually lasted, it would be dishonest to say: the fund publishes neither a counter of applications nor news that the money has run out. What is known is something else and far more telling — the second round was opened with money that hadn’t been handed out in previous years.

As of 17 September 2026 there is no open window. The second window closed on 27 July, a third has not been announced, and nobody has named a date for the next one. What to do if you want the car now: watch the “Apoios” section on the fund’s website — the notice appears there, and the button to apply along with it.

And some good news that takes half the hurry out of it: the money is paid retroactively. Invoices from 1 January 2025 count. So you can buy the car today and apply in the next window — as long as the invoice and the scrapping fall within the deadlines.

“When registering the car. The DUA is a document similar to the Russian vehicle registration certificate. With it you can already apply for the compensation, if you manage to get in.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

myptaxes17.08.2023

How to apply and what happens next

Everything is done on the fund’s website. First you register on the application platform, then fill in the form for the type you have chosen.

When applying you need only two things: a NIF and an IBAN. You don’t have to show the car at this stage — the fund checks you first, not the purchase.

Next comes a letter approving the application. From its date you have three months to do two things: confirm that you have read and accept the terms (Termo de Aceitação), and submit the payment request with documents. Miss it and the application is cancelled, and the right to the payment is lost.

To the payment request you attach:

— the invoice and proof of payment, both dated after 1 January 2025, in your name, with the chassis number; — proof that the car is registered to you — the vehicle certificate (DUA); — the certificate that the old car was scrapped; — if leasing, instead of the invoice — a full copy of the contract and the vehicle handover record; — for a charger: the invoice for the charger itself and the invoice for installation from a certified electrician, showing the CPE of the installation point and the electrician’s certificate number.

Documents are not accepted by post — only through the form. The status of the application is shown in your account on the platform, and you get an email about every change. There are several statuses: eligibility check, payment request, “under review”, “accepted”, “for payment” and “completed” — the last one means the money has been sent. If something is missing, the application goes into “awaiting additional documents”, and your place in the queue is kept — sending papers later is nothing to worry about.

Separately, about the worst outcome: if the fund considers the application ineligible, it sends a “proposal for exclusion”, and you have 10 working days to object. Stay silent and the application is excluded.

The notice sets no deadline by which the fund must pay: it only says that the money is transferred to your account once all the conditions are met.

After the money: two years without selling the car or taking it abroad

People don’t think about this when applying, and they should. Having received the payment, you are obliged to keep the car (or the charger) for at least 24 months. And as a separate point: you may not take the car out of Portugal — the point of the programme is for the electric car to stay here.

What this means in practice. The scheme “get a new EV at a discount and sell it to Spain six months later” doesn’t fit the conditions. If you are seriously thinking of leaving the country in the next two years, better not to take the payment: the obligations remain yours, and the money would have to be paid back.

The twenty-four months run from the date the payment was approved — that is what the notice page says; the text of the notice itself says in one place “from the date of purchase”. The difference is a couple of months, and if things are close to the deadline, it is better to ask the fund in writing than to guess.

Taxes: an electric car simply doesn’t pay them

This always applies, regardless of programmes, windows and queues.

ISV — the tax on first registration. Purely electric cars are taken out of it by the code itself: they are not “exempt on application”, they don’t fall under the tax at all. This also applies to an imported car: bring an EV over from Germany and ISV is zero. You will still have to file a vehicle declaration (DAV): the code says plainly that the declaration is filed for cars outside the tax too, otherwise there will be no plates. How importing itself works is in the guide How to bring your car to Portugal.

IUC — the annual car tax. Purely electric cars are exempt. There is nothing to pay or file: the engine type is visible in the register. From 1 January 2027 the code says this even more directly: it now has a list of exemptions that you don’t need to prove to the tax office, and electric cars are on it. Also from 2027 the way IUC is paid changes for everyone else — there will be one bill for all of an owner’s cars, payable in April; for an EV owner this changes nothing, there is still nothing to pay.

VAT. Paid as usual, 23%. It is not refunded to a private individual — this is where the chats confuse themselves with companies: VAT deduction belongs to the tax affairs of someone running a business, not to buying a car for yourself.

What this means for the sums. Zero ISV is thousands of euros on import, and zero IUC is from a hundred to several hundred euros a year compared with a petrol car. What a year of ownership comes to for different cars is worked out in the guide Which car to buy in Portugal.

“For an electric car you pay iva, but the annual IUC tax you don’t pay”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

reciboverde14.10.2025

“Well ISV formally isn’t a tax on the goods, it’s on CO2 emissions) Every country calls it its own way, but basically it’s like an emissions tax. Roughly speaking an EV has no emissions - no tax”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

reciboverde11.08.2024

A charger in a condominium: money for it and the right to install it

A separate type under the same programme is a charger for a parking space in a block of flats. You get 80% of the price of the charger itself, but no more than €800, and on top of that 80% of the electrical installation, but no more than €1,000 per space. Plus, for twenty-four months the fund pays the EGME fee for you — the electric mobility operator’s charge that would otherwise fall on the owner of the charging point.

Conditions: the building is a block of flats under propriedade horizontal, and the space is in the building’s shared enclosed area. Either a resident or the condominium manager can apply, alone or as a group of neighbours at once; one charger per flat and no more than ten per building. The installation invoice is issued by a certified electrician, and it must show the CPE of the installation point and his certificate number — without that, no payment.

Now about the right. Until 2025, putting a charger in a shared garage meant talking the owners’ meeting round. Now it’s different: under the electric mobility regime any flat owner has the right to install a charger for themselves at their own expense. If the cable runs through common property — and it almost always does — you need not permission but written notice to the condominium manager (and to the landlord, if you rent) at least 30 days before the work.

The condominium can object on only five grounds:

— it will itself install a shared charger with the same capabilities within 90 days; — such a shared charger already exists in the building; — the installation is demonstrably dangerous to people or property, and this is confirmed by a technical report; — it obstructs passage along common routes; — after it, accessibility rules in common areas are breached.

The decision is taken within 30 days of your notice, by a simple majority of the building’s value, recorded in the minutes and sent to absent neighbours within 15 days; a refusal must state its reasons. A plain “we’re against it” is not a ground.

The technical side, which people on the spot warn about: a charger needs its own residual current circuit breaker, and the current comes from the power allocated to the building. If there is no separate meter in the shared garage, you will have to ask the grid company for a new connection point — this is done by a licensed electrician, the individual can’t submit such a request himself.

And a correction to what people say in the chats: help with a charger is not “a thousand euros from the state”. It is two amounts: up to €800 for the charger itself and up to €1,000 for installation, and both are worked out as 80% of the invoice.

“Under PT requirements a charger has to have a type A RCD. Current - go by the power allocated to the building and the type of charger you’re going to connect to it.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

remont_pt19.04.2026

“Looking for a certified electrician / técnico responsável DGEG or a company in Portimão who can prepare the paperwork for a request to E-REDES for a new connection point / separate meter in the condominium’s shared garage, for my parking space, followed by installing an EV charger / wallbox.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

chatalgarve09.05.2026

Count the socket, not the discount

Four thousand euros is a nice sum, but it is one-off, while you live with the car every day. The main question is not “will I get the payment” but where will you charge.

Your own socket at home. From an ordinary household socket the car takes about 2 kW — a whole night for a hundred kilometres. People who do this fit a 16-amp industrial socket and buy an adapter for the car; a proper charger (wallbox) gives 7 kW or more, and that one fully charges the car overnight.

A rented flat without a garage is the hardest case. You can’t run a cable down from the fifth floor, and you are left with the public network at its prices.

The public network. The network connected to MOBI.E has more than 15,900 charging points, and it is in every municipality in the country, including the Azores and Madeira. That is a lot — but the price per kilowatt-hour there is several times higher than at home, and at fast chargers the difference is especially noticeable. People who have done the sums come to different answers: for some an EV is three to four times cheaper than diesel, for others the saving disappears completely at public chargers.

A simple way to decide for yourself: work out how far you drive a month and where the car spends the night. If at night it is at your own socket — count on the saving with confidence. If it is in a yard or on the street — first go to the nearest public charger, look at the price per kilowatt-hour and multiply by your month. That figure decides more than any payment.

You no longer have to work it out by hand. On 17 September 2026 the state energy agency ADENE put out a free cost calculator for electric cars — the Simulador de Mobilidade Elétrica on the Poupa Energia portal. It asks about exactly what matters: your car’s range and consumption, how far you drive and on what roads — town, local area or motorway — what share of your charging you do at home and what share outside and at which chargers: standard (up to 22 kW), semi-fast (22–⁠50 kW), fast (50–⁠150 kW) or ultra-fast (over 150 kW) — and how powerful the charger at your home is. In return it works out your costs for the year, compares them with the same car on fuel and shows which electricity tariff comes out cheaper for your consumption. It is free to use, commits you to nothing and has no adverts — the portal is run by the agency itself; once you choose a tariff, the calculator sends you to the supplier’s website.

The first runs say exactly what people argue about in the chats. The newspaper ECO ran several cases through the calculator and found: for a driver who drives five days a week on medium-length trips and sometimes further, car costs come out four times higher if there is nowhere to charge except public chargers. And in the case of regular long distances and no socket of your own at home, the car on fuel turned out cheaper — so “an EV is always cheaper” is wrong, and what decides it is not the make but the socket.

“For 15 grand you can buy a great car, the main thing is don’t get an EV if you can’t charge at home. A regular hybrid is fine”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

autolife_pt22.02.2026

“I’ve got a phev And it needs charging and I’m exactly that reference guy who lives in a rented flat with no way to charge go on throw a cable down from 15 m up So I’m exactly the one who has to use the infrastructure and recently I plugged in somehow didn’t check the app and in the end they charged me €35 for the charge Well even if you charge at the cheapest place at the cheapest post - that’s 6+ euros Buying petrol at current prices for six euros I’ll drive more kilometres so basically there it is the bright electric future and that’s only a phev - if it was a fully electric one….”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

autolife_pt23.03.2026

What first-hand experience says: town — yes, motorway — it depends

Chat conversations on this subject diverge more than on any other car topic, and they diverge along one line: how the person drives.

Town and local area. Here almost everyone agrees: an electric car is convenient, the battery lasts a long time, you can charge once every week or two. People also tell of work cars that drive round half a district in a day without running flat.

Motorway. This is where the argument starts. Some drive to Spain and say the charging stops coincide with the stops for food and the child. Others call the same thing a pain: at speed the range drops by half, there’s a queue at the fast charger, and three hundred kilometres turn into half a day.

Money on resale. On this, people in the chats are blunt and almost unanimous: EVs lose value on the used market faster than other cars. Those who count the full cost of ownership put this into the sum next to the fuel savings, and the result depends heavily on how many years you plan to drive.

Our conclusion from all this is simple. The fund’s programme is not a reason to buy an electric car, but a discount for someone who has already decided. The decision is made by the socket and the mileage, and the €4,000 just makes it cheaper — if you catch the window.

“mine’s not a tesla, but it’s an EV too. haven’t noticed any downsides so far. there are chargers at loads of shops like lidl/pingo doce/decathlon/mercadona - we didn’t even bother putting in a charger at home coz the public ones are more than enough. we travel with a kid and a dog, so we have to stop for breaks anyway, that’s exactly when we charge.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

autolife_pt07.07.2026

“After three years with an EV I’ve worked out one thing, it’s super convenient for town or short distances, basically for speeds up to 50 km/h, with stop-start braking, one battery can last two weeks and you can do 400-500 km. As soon as you get on the motorway, where your foot is on the accelerator all the time, it runs out extremely fast, after roughly 120-150 km.”

Translated from Russian; the original is at the link

chatporto18.03.2026