Electric car sales keep climbing and climbing in Norway. In 2013, many of us were shocked to learn that electric cars were accounting for about 10–15% of new car sales in the country. We are now well aware of the fact that the Norway electric vehicle market is in a league of its own, and just yesterday I wrote about the breakdown of June electric car sales in the picturesque country. But I skipped one important note, the percentage of new car sales that were electric car sales.
Jeff Cobb reminded me of this important matter when he published an article yesterday highlighting that 22.9% of new cars in Norway are now plug-in electrified cars. And if you want some serious perspective here, catch this line: “Comprised of battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, if the same thing were to happen in the US on a percentage basis, it would have meant 1,943,177 new PEVs on American roads since January.” We have 50,503 new PEVs on our roads since January, about 2.6% of that number….
And while PEV sales in some countries, like the Netherlands, are dominated by plug-in hybrids, Norwegians are big fans of the fully electric models. Since January, 18.4% of all new cars registered in Norway have been fully electric cars, while 4.5% have been plug-in hybrids.
Now for the depressing context: It takes a long time to shift the entire vehicle fleet. Norway’s 62,500 or so PEVs just represent about 2.4% of the 2.6 million cars on Norway’s roads.
Anyway, though, this is supposed to be a fun post, so here’s one more statistic I imagine you’ll enjoy: the top-selling Volkswagen e-Golf = 71% of all Volkswagen Golf models sold in Norway since January. The #2 Tesla Model S, meanwhile, recently had its top-end P85D trim voted the best car in Norway, beating out the Mercedes AMG GTS, Ferrari 458 Speciale, Jaguar F-Type AWD 3.0, BMW X6M, and every other car on the market.
For much more on why electric cars are so popular in Norway, see these exclusives:
Top-Selling Cars In Norway Now Electric Cars (Two Months In A Row) — 4 Reasons Why
Norwegian Electric Car User Findings (10 Charts)
And this piece and video, too:
How Electric Vehicles Went Mainstream In Norway
Top Chart via “Norwegian electric car user experiences” study, conducted by Petter Haugneland and Hans Håvard Kvisle of the Norwegian Electric Vehicles Association.