Sales of the Nissan Leaf are booming in Norway. The popular electric vehicle was the second best-selling car, of any type, in the country during the month of April.
The Nissan Leaf sold 455 units in April, which represents a 3.3% share of total sales that month. The top spot was held by the Volkswagen Golf, which sold 903 units and had a 6.5% share.
As of right now, the Leaf is the fifth best-selling car of 2013 in Norway, up from the thirteenth best-selling in 2012. Sales of the Leaf there only began about 18 months ago, and since then, impressively, more than 4,500 of the EVs have been sold. That makes it the best-selling car in the Nissan range for Norway.
No doubt part of the vehicle’s success in Norway stems from the strong incentives that the government there has in place for EVs — “national and local governments in the Nordic nation have reduced VAT to zero, installed electric car only car parks and allowed the use of bus lanes.”
Because of the rapid rate of EV adoption in the country, the government in Norway’s capital, Oslo, recently decided to increase the rate of EV charging point installations from about 100 per year, as it is now, to over 200 per year. That rate will be kept up for at least the next four years.
The President of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, Snorre Sletvold, had this to say, as quoted by Green Car Congress: “It is clear that Norway leads the world in electric vehicle sales per capita and as a people we are very proud of this. We are clearly demonstrating to other countries in Europe and across the globe that if you build infrastructure and put some smart incentives in place people buy zero emission cars and use them everyday.”
“We may have big oil reserves, but our government sees encouraging electric vehicles as an investment in reducing pollution, raising air quality and improving public health, I hope other countries will learn from this.”