Norway Reaches 97% EV Sales as EVs Now Outnumber Diesels On Its Roads (electrek.co)
- Reference: 0180569356
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/12/1940241/norway-reaches-97-ev-sales-as-evs-now-outnumber-diesels-on-its-roads
- Source link: https://electrek.co/2026/01/02/norway-reaches-97-ev-sales-as-evs-now-outnumber-diesels-on-its-roads/
> In 2017, Norway set a formal non-binding target to end fossil car sales in the country by 2025 -- a target earlier than any other country in the world by several years. Norway was already well ahead of the world in EV adoption, with about a third of new cars being electric at the time -- but it wanted to schedule the final blow for just 8 years later, fairly short as far as automotive timelines go.
>
> At the time, many (though not us at Electrek) considered this to be an optimistic goal, and figured that it might get pushed back. But Norway did not budge in its target (unlike more cowardly nations). And it turns out, when you set a realistic goal, craft policy around it, and don't act all wishy-washy or change your mind every few years, you can actually get things done. (In fact, Europe currently has around the same EV sales level as Norway did 10 years ahead of its 100% goal -- which means Europe's former 100% 2035 goal is still eminently achievable)
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/01/02/norway-reaches-97-ev-sales-as-evs-now-outnumber-diesels-on-its-roads/
Something to learn (Score:2)
I know a lot of people will have a gut reaction to want to immediately find and point out the unique aspects of Norway that make its various successes possible, but take a moment to ponder, and first look at whether there might be anything to learn.
Re: Something to learn (Score:4)
Of course. If you have a huge country with a small population then setting up enough charging stations isnt an issue. There are 4 million private cars in norway. There are 34 million here in the uk, a country just over half Norway's land area with very crowded cities and many flats and houses with zero off street parking or any kind of parking at all so charging at home is a non starter for them. Meanwhile theres nowhere to put charging stations and no, all the streets cant be dug up to install street charger or uprate the supply to street lamps to install there of which there arnt nearly enough anyway.
Re: Something to learn (Score:2)
And you're out of brains sonny. Run along to mummy, your dinners ready.
Re: Something to learn (Score:2)
That's bullshit
No way he came out of a sweet anything
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I'm coming around to wireless charging. Putting a strip of wireless charging coils along a tight street is expensive, but doable. It would be ideal if they could make capacitive work, since it can use a lot less copper, but even inductive is doable.
Re: Something to learn (Score:2)
The current government is full of shit and prioritisises virtue signalling words over actually doing something. Plus they're skint so no public funds for chargers.
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Why would off-street or on-street EV chargers matter? Both exist, and EV chargers can be, and often are, added to normal gas stations. You are not making any sense.
Re: Something to learn (Score:2)
It takes 10 times longer to charge an EV than fill an ICE car so instead of 8 pumps you'll need 80 chargers in an area with no home charging to serve the same number of vehicles. This really isnt rocket science.
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> Of course. If you have a huge country with a small population then setting up enough charging stations isnt an issue. There are 4 million private cars in norway. There are 34 million here in the uk, a country just over half Norway's land area with very crowded cities and many flats and houses with zero off street parking or any kind of parking at all so charging at home is a non starter for them. Meanwhile theres nowhere to put charging stations and no, all the streets cant be dug up to install street charger or uprate the supply to street lamps to install there of which there arnt nearly enough anyway.
In the face of these differences between the UK (or the US) and Norway, a pessimist would conclude that the differences are substantial, and Norway's approach is just not practical. An optimist would instead look to find similarities between Norway and individual US states, and say that Norway's approach might be worth looking into for a state like California, or Minnesota, ... or Scotland.
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All those cars are parking somewhere for a lot of the time. It's a matter of setting up charging points wherever cars park.
Not every parking space needs to support charging - but even for curb side street parking, if you have a street light nearby it shouldn't be that hard to add a charger to the closest one or two car parks - and considering many of those streetlights would have been installed and wired when lighting was using much more power heavy incandescent lighting, there is likely to be a fai
Re: Something to learn (Score:2)
Show me a street light that used even 7.5kw never mind 150kw.
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I tend to compare the two - similar wealth by population, similar population density, similar city rural divide, etc... Still large enough to need recharging on longer trips.
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I can't charge at home due to living in an apartment but my car is happily charging using a streetlight charger
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Extremely high rate of private parking. An electricity grid dimensioned for resistive heating now sitting around with excess capacity. Oil wealth.
Look Behind the Curtain (Score:5, Interesting)
Good for them! As one of the world's largest exporters of oil, they shouldn't be wasting it on domestic uses.
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Ironic, huh? Kudo's for them for using their resources well, and providing a good quality of life for their citizens.
Re: Look Behind the Curtain (Score:4, Insightful)
The hypocrisy of funding their countries "green" lifestyle by selling crude tends to stick in peoples throats.
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Why? Has the nation or Norway made statement chastising the rest of the world for using oil? Have they made hypocritical statements?
Or is this just how you perceive them based on the news you hear?
You don't actually even have to even believe in climate change or harmful emissions at all to acknowledge the advantages of electric vehicles. Even Suadi Arabia is targeting 50k chargers by 2030 and a big EV investment.
Re: Look Behind the Curtain (Score:1)
Newsflash dimwit - hypocrisy can be through actions as well as words. If they truly believed in environmentalism they limit their crude production or even cease it altogether. Oh but wait -"if we didnt produce it someone else would, right?". That's the BS of corporate sociopaths everywhere to excuse their morality free actions.
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So the action of selling the oil itself is enough to declare the entire nation hypocritical, even if they don't say or do much to anyone else outside of that. Are they doing sanctions against other nations? Are they making statements decrying the other nations?
Seriously, I don't think you've justified this position at all, can you give us anything else besides the fact that Norway has and sells a bunch of oil and they've also invested heavily into electric vehicles. That's it? On it's face there is nothi
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> If they truly believed in environmentalism
"Appeal to motive." You don't know what goes in their minds. The word "environment" isn't in TFA at all. Norway isn't all clear regarding environmental protection [1]https://www.newsinenglish.no/2... [newsinenglish.no]
There is nothing hypocrite for Norway (or Saudi Arabia) to target the use of cars that are superior in every aspect at least in the conditions available in their country.
[1] https://www.newsinenglish.no/2024/01/19/norway-shamed-over-its-alleged-disregard-for-climate-and-nature/
Re: Look Behind the Curtain (Score:2)
Vehicles with low range compred to ICEs particularly in the cold are far from being the most suitable vehicles in a mountainous arctic circle country. But believe the propaganda if it makes you feel better.
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Kind of like Texas. Most of our local electricity is "green", and we sell our oil and gas to other states.
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I don't think it's hypocrisy - just intelligent planning. I suppose they could have done what other oil-rich nations might do e.g. spend the money buying a Rolls-Royce in every color or perhaps by spending billions in the war machinery but their focus is elsewhere and that's not a bad thing.
When a highly education, relatively low population, oil-rich country with a very cold climate and dispersed population makes this kind of news, we should be celebrating their results instead of trying to find every f
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The hypocrisy of calling other people hypocritical just because you don't like EVs, because you associate a messaging with EVs you don't like either!
Norway has large resources of hydroelectricity, and this is not as easily exported as oil. It just makes economical sense to put the domestic electricity to good use instead of burning oil you could sell abroad. It has nothing to do with being green, but all with being business savvy. But instead of acknowledging how someone can sell stuff he does not need, y
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You know what they say, don't get high on your supply.
Elektrek burries lede. 2/3rds of fleet fossil (Score:2)
I like EVs and all. But elektrek buries the lede, but at least mentions it:
a) 2/3rds of registered cars still fossil. so about 1/3 electric 1/3 diesel 1/3 gas
> But even with this victory, Norway isn’t ready to sit still. OFV director Geir Inge Stokke took the moment to remind everyone that “two out of three passenger cars on the road still run on fossil fuels.. so even though this is an important milestone, we must continue working towards an emission-free vehicle fleet.”
b) The EV sales for the 2nd half of the year were juiced because of expiring incentives.
> The end-of-year surge in EV sales was helped by retiring incentives. Earlier this year, Norway declared victory on its 100% EV goal, and changed the generous incentive structure that had helped the country reach these heights.
> The incentive will now be reduced for more expensive EVs (those costing over 300k NOK, or ~$30k), which led to a rush to buy higher-priced EVs, including Teslas.
(those are discounts via VAT exemptions. so i think they became like 25% discounts. This year they dropped the price limit from $50k to ~$30K they're fully expiring by 2027. But they also promised to crank up ICE taxes even more to "make sure E
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seems to me that electric cars are simple, they don't make much noise, and don't burp out CO2. I hope this does become a case study on the benefits of EV's, and people wise up. The "drill baby drill" message seems kind of stupid while the Saudi's are flooding the world with oil, and drilling new wells are not profitable.
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> seems to me that electric cars are simple, they don't make much noise, and don't burp out CO2.
Modern electric cars are AWESOME, as long as you have a place to charge them on the cheap every night or three (like at your house).
Then they're in the same ballpark as gas cars in terms of TCO. (they're cheaper to run and have cheaper maintenance, but it's not clear if you come out ahead at 3 , 5 , 10 years ownership. so same ballpark).
At public charging, gas is slightly cheaper (most places in the US, but not always). And maybe it'll take an extra maybe 2 hours per 1000 miles (assuming newish EV usin
Easier for Norway (Score:2)
The main difference is that Norway isn't dependent on manufacturing capacity. The Norwegian market can easily be met with existing EV manufacturing capacity. If a country like the U.S. wanted to completely convert, you'd need the automakers to massively scale EV production. That can't be done as quickly as simply switching buying patterns. China is actually going the route of scaling manufacturing, but they are still around 50/50 for new car sales with EV/gas and China is pretty unmatched when it comes to s
EV's with high horsepower are not green (Score:2)
Just because a vehicle has an electrical driver system--doesn't mean that it is environmentally friendly. Case in point: you could power 760 Class-3 ebikes if you take one Tesla Plaid off of the road. In engineering there is a saying: there is no free lunch. The power has to come from somewhere.
I Love This For Them (Score:2, Funny)
But I don't live in Norway so, if I'm honest, I don't give a flying fuck about EV sales in Norway.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
> But I don't live in Norway so, if I'm honest, I don't give a flying fuck about EV sales in Norway.
Their population only being between 5 and 6 million people does make it a little less impressive. They're also 80-90% native Norwegians, so diversity of morals and perceptions isn't much of an issue there either.
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diversity shouldn't be a problem anywhere, it is only thinking that makes it so. (some propaganda too).
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> They're also 80-90% native Norwegians, so diversity of morals and perceptions isn't much of an issue there either.
So having Norwegian ancestors makes you want to buy an EV?
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It's their genetic memory of their ancestors' electric longboats.
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> But I don't live in Norway so, if I'm honest, I don't give a flying fuck about EV sales in Norway.
You sound angry.
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Oh boy, what a comeback! The amazing wit to think of calling someone a "fag" is just breathtaking!
But glad you love that for them. You must be one too. But Slashdot is a griping site, not a dating site.
Re: I Love This For Them (Score:2)
Stupidity hurts, yes. Thankfully it hurts the idiot the most, sadly they are too stupid to realize that.
People mad at EVs reach peak dumbass.
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I don't live in Norway either, but I'm happy to learn about other places. It's especially refreshing to know that there are still some progressive countries out there.
Veldig bra, Norge!
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"Progressive" country that exports around 1.6 million barrels of oil per day, and is the 13th biggest oil producing country in the world despite being tiny.