BBC
Norway is the world leader when it comes to the take up of electric cars, which last year accounted for nine out of 10 new vehicles sold in the country. Can other nations learn from it?
For more than 75 years Oslo-based car dealership Harald A Møller has been importing Volkswagens, but early in 2024 it bid farewell to fossil fuel cars.
Now all the passenger vehicles for sale in its showroom are electric (EV).
“We think it’s wrong to advise a customer coming in here today to buy an ICE [internal combustion engine] car, because the future is electric,” says chief executive Ulf Tore Hekneby, as he walks around the cars on display. “Long-range, high-charging speed. It’s hard to go back.”
On the streets of Norway’s capital, Oslo, battery-powered cars aren’t a novelty, they’re the norm. Take a look around and you’ll soon notice that almost every other car has an “E” for “electric” on its license plate.
The Nordic nation of 5.5 million people has adopted EVs faster than any other country, and is on the cusp of becoming the first to phase out the sale of new fossil fuel cars.
Last year, the number of electric cars on Norway’s roads outnumbered those powered by petrol for the first time. When diesel vehicles are included, electric cars account for almost a third of all on Norwegian roads.
And 88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, up from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out.
By contrast, in the UK electric cars made up only 20% of new car registrations in 2024. Although this was a record high, and up from 16.5% in 2023.
In the US, the figure was just 8% last year, up from 7.6%.
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Norway is undoubtedly an EV pioneer, but this electric revolution has been three decades in the making.
“It started already in the early 1990s,” says Christina Bu, the secretary general of the Norwegian EV Association, as she took me for a spin around Oslo in an electric minivan.
“Little by little taxing petrol and diesel engine cars more, so they have become a lot more expensive to purchase, whereas electric cars have been exempted from taxes.”
The support for electric vehicles was first introduced to help two Norwegian manufacturers of early EVs, the Buddy (previously Kewet) and TH!NK City. While they went out of business, the incentives for greener vehicles remained.
“It’s our goal to see that it’s always a good and viable choice, to choose zero emission,” says Norway’s Deputy Transport Minister, Cecilie Knibe Kroglund.
Even though it’s a major oil and gas producer, Norway aims for all new cars sold to be “zero emission”, starting at some point in 2025. A non-binding goal was set back in 2017, and that milestone now lies within reach.
“We are closing up on the target, and I think that we will reach that goal,” adds Kroglund. “I think we have already made the transition for passengers cars.”