The number of electric vehicles in Norway.
Norway is seeing extraordinary pace of EV adoption, with the latest monthly data showing that 90 percent of new car sales are fully electric, and new figures showing that the number of battery EVs (BEVs) on Norway’s roads will soon double. It is going to overtake petrol. Trains.
New data from the Norwegian Public Roads Administration seen by Reuters shows that BEVs accounted for 24.3% of Norway’s 2.9 million cars as of mid-March, while petrol vehicles accounted for 26.9%.
If this trend continues, which will certainly give EV share in the new car market, experts predict that the number of BEVs on Norway’s roads will exceed the number of petrol vehicles by the end of the year or early 2025 – The year in which Norway will officially stop selling new petrol and diesel cars.
“Given that sales of pure-petrol cars are negligible right now, there will be more BEVs on the road than pure-petrol cars this time next year, and probably before the end of this year,” Robbie Andrew, a senior researcher at Climate Change. “Think – thank you,” Cicero told Reuters.
About 10,000 new vehicles are sold every month in Norway and the share of full battery EVs in March was 89.3 percent, with plug-in hybrids at 2.2 percent. Another 5.7 percent were mild hybrid vehicles.
As for total fleet numbers, diesel vehicles retain the largest share, but Andrew said he believes BEVs will even overtake the number of diesel cars on Norwegian roads in the next three to four years.
Norway led the world in EV adoption due to its pro-EV policies in the early 90s and in 2016 became the first country in the world to set an end date for the sale of ICE passenger and commercial vehicles.
Norway has offered generous incentives for those wishing to purchase an EV, including exempting BEVs from the taxes imposed on ICE vehicles, as well as investing in public charging infrastructure.
This almost universal political support for electric vehicles has resulted in a decline in new vehicle emissions, down to just 15 g/km in May of 2023. For comparison, average new vehicle emissions in Australia in 2022 were 11 times higher at 164 g/km.
Other economic benefits across the spectrum – from public health to noise pollution and reduced fuel and maintenance costs – speak volumes about the value in political support for an electrified transition.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology and electric vehicles for more than 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. Their preferred means of transportation is their feet.