Dr. Kelly de Bruin:

The first thing that one needs to understand is that there are a lot of exemptions in the Swedish carbon tax system for industry as opposed to private consumers. Second, ethanol is extremely popular in private vehicles in Sweden. That is one of the main contributors to the slower than expected uptake. Furthermore, the distances that Swedish people drive, on average, are much higher than in smaller countries like Ireland. The uptake in recent years has increased tremendously in Sweden because the ranges of the electric vehicles have improved. If one is looking at electric vehicle uptake in Sweden vis-à-visthe carbon tax, one must look at the most recent years when the uptake has been much higher.

The reason for the delay was that people were using ethanol-powered vehicles in the interim.