The sale of electric cars has been boosted by tax breaks and other incentives, financed in large part by the money Norway earns from exporting oil and gas.
Norway, one of the world’s largest oil exporters, now has more electric cars than gasoline vehicles.
Of the 2.8 million private cars registered in the country, 754,303 are fully electric, compared to 753,905 that run on gasoline, according to new figures from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV). Diesel models remain the most numerous, with just under a million – but their sales are declining rapidly.
“This is historic. A milestone that few predicted 10 years ago,” said OFV director Øyvind Solberg Thorsen in a statement.
The Nordic country of 5.5 million inhabitants wants to become the first nation to end the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars by 2025 – ten years ahead of the European Union’s target. “The electrification of the passenger car fleet is advancing rapidly and Norway is thus moving fast towards becoming the first country in the world with a passenger car fleet dominated by electric cars,” Thorsen points out.
This increase in sales of electric vehicles is due to the government offering tax breaks and other incentives, such as free tolls and parking, exemption from sales tax for buyers of electric cars and the existence of numerous free chargers in all Norwegian cities (2,000 in Oslo alone). These measures make electric vehicles more competitive with fuel, diesel and hybrid cars.
The incentives are largely financed by revenues from the sale of oil and gas. This fossil fuel fund amounts to more than 1.7 billion dollars and acts as a “pension fund” for when it runs out.
Currently, nine out of ten new cars sold in Norway are electric vehicles, according to industry figures. In August, electric vehicles broke the record with 94.3% of new car registrations in Norway, driven by sales of the Tesla Model Y.
Despite the success of electric vehicles in Norway, this is not reflected in the rest of Europe, where sales began to decline at the end of 2023 and account for only 12.5% of new cars sold.
The rental is supported by a private sharing application and a digital platform that manages the fleet and users. After Spain, France and Italy, Portuguese
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