More than half electric cars in Norway
The trend has been going on for a long time, but now the change of throne is a fact. As the first country in the world, Norway has more than half pure electric cars in sales.
For the full year 2020, the fully battery-powered passenger cars landed on 54.3 percent of the Norwegian new car market, according to figures from the industry body OFV. This can be compared with 42.4 percent in 2019. Cars with petrol, diesel and hybrid operation can now share a minority of the market.
Buyers of exhaust-free cars benefit from lower taxes plus other benefits in Norway, in the hope of achieving the goal that sales of fossil cars will have ceased by 2025.
The trend also accelerated during the year, and in December, two out of three cars sold – 66.7 percent – were fully electric.
2020’s most bought car was Audi’s electric model E-tron, which achieved a market share of 6.5 percent. The closest competitors were Tesla’s Model 3 and VW’s new electricity investment ID3, both of which received a share of 5.5 percent.
The craving for electric cars also contributes to the Norwegian car market largely escaping the deep pandemic that the industry has suffered in the rest of the world. The total market for passenger cars shrank by a modest 0.7 percent to 141,412 copies. This can be compared with, for example, Sweden, where the decline compared with 2019 was 18.1 percent.
