Norway announces that 87% of new cars bought in March were electric
Of the 19,366 new cars sold in Norway during March, 16,811 of them were electric vehicles. This is 86.8% of the total, and once hybrids are removed from the equation, pure diesel and petrol cars together only accounted for 2.7% of new registrations.
That figure represents a 19.3% increase in electric car sales compared to March last year.
It is expected that by the end of the year the 90% mark will be passed, meaning the country is comfortably on course to hit its target of 100% by the end of 2025.
One startling statistic in the new figures is that exactly one third of all cars sold in the first three months of the year were Teslas, with the Tesla Model Y making up 44.3% of all cars sold in March.
Thanks to the fact that EVs have been a familiar sight in Norway for so long, the second hand market is in a much more robust state than the UK’s, with 14% more EVs changing hands than in the same period last year.
The number of electric vans is also rising with 2,063 sold out of a total of 5,504 – a share of 37% and an increase of 87% compared with the same period last year.
Norway are World-leaders in the adoption of EVs, with the largest per-capita fleet on earth. Last year the number of EVs on the road reached 25% of the total. Policy has driven the switch, with 25% VAT on internal combustion engine vehicles and a range of benefits for EV drivers (exemption from road tax, parking fees and toll payments; as well as being able to use bus lanes) meaning buying and running an EV was no more expensive than the ICE alternatives. These incentives proved deeply controversial at the time and have since been phased out.
In July last year it was announced that in the first six months of 2022, the top ten best selling cars in the country were all EVs – a period in which the sale of plug-in petrol hybrids decreased by 70.2%.
Sourc : airqualitynews.com
1 November 2023 .