Nearly all new cars sold in snowy Norway in 2024 were EVs
Fully battery powered vehicles made up 89 percent of all new cars sold in 2024, the highest electrification of private transport in the world.
9 out of 10 new cars sold last year were electric vehicles, according to the
Norwegian Road Information Authority(OFV). In 2023, the share of EVs was 82 percent and the goal set by the Norwegian parliament is to achieve a 100 percent share in 2025.
"This goal is possible to reach," says Øyvind Solberg Thorsen, Director of OFV. He, however, underlines that it is necessary to maintain incentives that offer benefits for the purchase of electric cars.
Benefits include VAT exemption for electric vehicles up to the price of 500,000 kroner (€42,780) and lower prices on toll roads. From January 1 this year, taxes on cars with combustion engines, including petrol plug-in hybrids, increase.
Norway has a comprehensive network of about 9,000 fast-chargers, including in the sparsely populated areas in the north.
In the Finnmark region, hundreds of kilometers inside the Arctic Circle, most city buses are battery powered. In the longer run, Norway has said regional airliners operating the smaller airports should fly with zero emission.
While Norway is about to reach a 100 percents battery-electric car market, other European nations see decreasing sales. Registrations of battery-electric cars in the EU declined by 9.5% in November 2024, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). This drop was primarily driven by a significant decrease in registrations in Germany (-21.8%) and France (-24.4%). It resulted in a year-to-date market volume 5.4% lower than the same period last year, with the total market share now at 13.4%.
It is the Nordic countries that have the highest share of batter-electric vehicles in the EU in 2024. Denmark had 50,4%, Sweden 34,4% and Finland 28,8%.
