Electric Vehicles in Norway
This is the world’s first country to have more EVs than gasoline and petrol-powered cars.
What are the numbers and how long does this normally take? I think that’s what a lot of people wonder.
They’re saying, you know what? There are so many internal combustion engine cars on the road.
It’s going to take many decades before we can get rid of them and replace them with EVs.
It actually happens a fair bit faster than you would think.
Speaking of EVs that you can buy in Norway now, Norway is, of course, this country where EVs have now overtaken gas-powered cars in terms of vehicles actually on the roads.
Now, of course, this doesn’t include diesel-powered cars.
Current EV and Diesel Car Statistics
The world leader in EV adoption, Norway, said that of the 2.8 million passenger cars registered in the country, around 26.3% are fully electric. That’s more than the number of gas vehicles on the road.
Diesel is the most common vehicle type, making up about 35% of the vehicles on Norwegian roads right now.
But it won’t be very long before EVs take over. Diesel as well, because if you look at the sales right now, Norway is up to about 94%.
Diesel cars are pretty much dead. New diesel cars in Europe have collapsed.
New diesel sales for diesel vehicles after the Dieselgate scandal, and after people started to realize just how incredibly bad you diesel cars are, the emissions are causing cancer, of course.
Diesel car sales collapsed, so I reckon give it about 12 months and the EV fleet will have surpassed diesel in Norway as well.
EV registrations as the total number of cars on the road in Norway. And then I’d say by about 2030 it’ll get to that point of maybe 60 or 70%.
How Norway’s EV Shift Happened So Fast
Norway, remember, is a pretty advanced country, so they do replace their cars relatively quickly.
The electrification of the passenger car fleet is keeping a high pace, said Norway. And Norway is moving rapidly towards becoming the first country in the world with a passenger car fleet dominated by electric cars, said the director of Oftv.
He predicted EVs will outnumber diesel cars by 2026. I think it’s probably very likely that even happen next year.
Norway leads the world in EV adoption, thanks to government incentives that include exempting electric cars and trucks from sales and emissions taxes.
It’s not really that big of an incentive, to be honest. There are bigger incentives in America.
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Lowering tolls and parking fees for these vehicles and allowing EV drivers to use bus lanes.
Now allowing EV drivers to use bus lanes is completely irrelevant because now that what 25% of all cars in Norway are EVs, it’s not an advantage anymore.
So that’s not really relevant to people buying an EV today. In fact, it makes no difference at all.
Government Incentives Driving EV Adoption
Now, of course, lowering exempting EVs from sales and emissions taxes, that’s that’s a definite positive.
That’s not the key driver though at this point in time. Keep in mind that at this point in time, 94% of all sales in Norway are electric.
if that was the key driver, then the same would be the case in America and other places where they offered big, big subsidies.
You’d find that EVs would be 94%, or at least over 50%. They’re nowhere near that, right? Another big I think a bigger reason for that is people in Norway are clearly willing to change to something new.
it’s this kind of understanding of technology and not being afraid of technology and having this willingness to change.
I think, along with, you know, being a really wealthy country has led to this, this very fast adoption? The Norwegian government has said that it hopes its tax incentives, which are funded partly by the money it makes selling oil and gas to other countries, will allow Norway to end all new gas and diesel vehicle sales in 2025 next year.
I don’t think Norway’s not saying they’re going to ban them. It’s saying that the market will just choose not to buy them anymore.
it makes sense, Imagine if you were one of the 6% of people who didn’t buy an EV last month in Norway.
You’d have to be thinking to yourself, what’s going to happen to my wholesale? What’s going to happen to my the value of my car, my internal combustion car in a few years? Because the resale value of internal combustion cars in Norway has collapsed.
It’s strange that the global media are not mentioning this, not pointing this out. It’s a big risk for you, right? If you go and buy a plug-in hybrid or hybrid or an internal combustion car today, you are making a pretty.
It is a risky decision If this car has got a high value, if it’s a if it’s going to cost you more than $50,000, you could lose a huge amount of money on resale.
Massive amount. It’s kind of like that situation where people were buying. They were buying those old Blackberries and Nokia 3000, three tens and all those old Ericsson phones, and all of a sudden the smartphone came out.
Future of EVs in Norway
What do you think all those old phones were worth, right? Nothing.
Norway’s tax incentives for low-emissions vehicles, introduced in 2007, spurred a decade-long spike in sales for diesel vehicles, which were calculated to have lower carbon dioxide emissions than gas-powered cars.
Now, of course, we now know that was a lie. Diesel sales peaked in 2017, and then sharply fell in favor of the growing EV market.
There are still almost 1 million diesel cars on the road, according to OMV. Many of these will be rolling on Norwegian roads for years to come.
Global EV Trends: Norway vs. Other Countries
Globally, about 18% of all new cars sold last year were EVs. This year, that number is higher. It’s just over 20%.
60% of new vehicle sales in China are plug-in hybrids or EVs. About a quarter of vehicle sales in Europe are electric and just under 10% of sales in the US.
It’s actually at about 8.5% based on July. Now, obviously, EV sales worldwide are growing quickly, but they’re not rising as fast in the US as some car makers expected.
That could be partly because those vehicles are not as good as they should be. I mean, for example, the Cybertruck is easily outselling the Ford F-150.
In fact, it’s more than doubling sales of the Ford F-150 Lightning.
Could it be partly because the Ford F-150 lightning has very, very slow charging? I mean, this is very important, I think, to truck owners who probably want to drive longer distance than the average car owner.
Charging speeds 150 kilowatt. Whereas charging on the Cybertruck is potentially 400 and can charge at 400kW speeds in Europe.
It’s been proven. So one of the reasons why I think EV sales have lagged in adoption in the US is, well, they’ve been targeted by the media with these fear campaigns and just brainwashed people in America into believing utter nonsense, which it seems easy to do for some reason.
for some reason the media just can brainwash the public very, very easily in places like Australia and the United States. And that’s probably harmed adoption.
Technology Gap in EV Markets
But it is also the technology. The technology in China for their EVs is significantly more advanced than the majority of EV manufacturers in America.
And that would be holding things back. I mean, if you want to buy a family van in the in China, you can buy one on par, pretty much on par with the cost for an internal combustion and not to mention, you can buy these new family vans that have, you know, 800km of range.
That that applies to many different sectors of the automotive industry. So these Chinese manufacturers are covering off all these different sectors.
They have electric utes that are relatively affordable.