Electric cars sale grows most in Norway’s northernmost county

Long distances and cold climate seem to be less worrying for drivers above the Arctic Circle.

Sales figures from the Information Council for the Road Traffic show an increase in sales of 140% for the first six months this year in Finnmark County, a part of Norway where electric-cars-sale hasn’t previously peaked like in the rest of the country.

Last week, electric vehicle No. 250,000 was registered in Norway. The fast growing sale is accelerated by the country’s VAT exemption for zero-emission vehicles, exempt from the annual road tax, toll payments and other benefits.

The Norwegian Government has set an ambitious target of 100% electric car sales by 2025. In the country as such, full-electric cars counted for 45% of all new sales in the first half of 2019. No other markets are buying more EVs per capita than Norway.

Commenting on the sales in Finnmark, Prime Minister Erna Solberg told NTB that people’s range anxiety becomes less relevant as new and better EVs are coming to the market.

She says electric vehicles sales will continue to grow.

“It will always be more profitable to buy electric car than a car with CO2-emission.”

As reported by the Barents Observer in June, Finnmark County is now about to get the world’s most advanced charging network with 17 high-power 150 kW chargers and eight fast chargers spread at key cross-roads across the county.

“Finnmark has been like a desert in regards to charging infrastructure for a long time and now they will get the world’s most advanced charging infrastructure. They will get a lot of high-power chargers and chargers everywhere,” said Ole Gudbrann Hempel with Fortum, the energy company that has teamed up with local energy utilities to build the network.

Finnmark is 13% bigger than Denmark in size, but the population is under 75,000.