Norway has become the first country in the world where the majority of new car sales are pure-electric cars, spurred on largely by demand for Volkswagen Group EVs.
In 2020, 54.3% of all new cars sold in Norway were fully electric, up from 42.1% in 2019. This marks the first time such cars have comprised more than 50% of new car sales in a country across a full year.
Norway’s EV sales now make up more than 10% of Europe's as a whole, where just 4% of new cars are fully electric. The Nordic country claims a similar advantage over the UK, where EVs comprise just 6.6% of new cars currently.
A key driver of Norway’s EV uptake has been demand for new-for-2020 Volkswagen Group EVs, of which Audi’s Audi E-tron and E-tron Sportback models were the most popular. Overall, EVs accounted for 76,789 of 141,412 new cars in 2020, with Audi’s SUV making up 9227, more than a tenth of all new EVs sold.
Volkswagen’s ID 3 electric hatchback was the third most popular car, with 7754 units sold, despite only being launched in September, just below the Tesla Model 3 (7770 sales) and above the Nissan Leaf (5221 sales).
The rapidly increasing popularity of EVs in Norway comes courtesy of the country’s generous tax breaks for zero-emission cars, imposed as part of a goal of becoming the first country to end the sales of combustion-engined cars by 2025.
The CEO of the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV), Oeyvind Thorsen, told a news conference that Norway is “definitely on track to reach the 2025 target”. According to current plans, this would be five years before the same milestone is reached in the UK.
In 2020, 108,205 pure-electric vehicles were registered in the UK. Although this is just 6.6% of all new car sales, it is a substantial increase over sales of the same cars in 2019. That year, EVs made up just 1.6% of UK new car sales, with 37,850 finding buyers.
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From 0 to 50 percent in ten years, just shows what can be done when luddites are ignored and you have an open mind to new solutions. Rest of the world will follow but bevs never have to be above 50 percent to be a success story.
Third option, well heeled, a leaf is barely any more than decent auto focus diesel, pretty much matches it for price when you take fuel into account or car tax for company car buyers, whether you like that advantage or not.
But look at the size difference in the market compared to the UK: The article states 108,000 pure EV sold in the UK in 2020, more than the 76,000 sold in Norway. It's easy to make BEV's work in such a small market with government incentives, an effective subsidised charging network and most importantly a low population densisty.
You just have to look at the growth over 10 years to see the way things are going, with more bevs coming along every year it will only be a matter of time before bevs get 50 percent of the european market. personally im looking forward to a 50 percent split after which maybe the ice ban will be reviewed.
low iq bigot , you neglect to mention that norways is wealthy because of offshore oil drilling, also you have high wages but 80% income tax helps subsidize insanely expensive infrastructure projects like ev subsidies and charging network.
Most countries don’t have trillions in oil wealth to fund massive ev rollout so maybe using norway as an example is misguided
So rich they have a choice but choose bev, and other countries are following get over it
Only because Norway gives huge incentives paid for by selling oil to other countries that then burn it! Totally hypocritical nation and far from clean.
And what other countries profit from arms sales, oil sales etc
Any idea, which car won Norwegian car of the year? Oh and Switzerlands. Oh and a Golden Steering Wheel Award in Germany, and was also voted Germany Luxury car of the year. I will give you a clue, it wasnt from Germany..
Germany...., what are you on about