Norway is the first country in the world with more electric vehicles than gas-powered cars on the road, according to vehicle registration data the Norwegian road federation, known as OFV, released Tuesday.
“The electrification of the passenger car fleet is keeping a high pace, and Norway is moving rapidly towards becoming the first country in the world with a passenger car fleet dominated by electric cars,” OFV Director Oyvind Solberg Thorsen said in a statement. He predicted EVs will outnumber diesel cars by 2026.
Norway leads the world in EV adoption, thanks to government incentives that include exempting electric cars and trucks from sales and emissions taxes, lowering tolls and parking fees for these vehicles, and allowing EV drivers to use bus lanes. The country is also one of the world’s wealthiest, which helps defray the higher upfront cost of EVs. Electric cars now make up more than 90 percent of new-vehicle sales.
The Norwegian government has said it hopes its tax incentives — which are funded in large part by the money the country makes selling oil and gas to other countries — will allow Norway to end all new gas and diesel vehicle sales by next year.
Norway’s tax incentives for lower-emission vehicles, introduced in 2007, spurred a decade-long spike in sales for diesel vehicles, which were calculated to have lower carbon dioxide emissions than gas-powered cars. Diesel sales peaked in 2017 and then sharply fell in favor of the growing EV market. But there are still almost 1 million diesel cars on the road, according to OFV.
“Many of these will be rolling on Norwegian roads for years to come,” Solberg Thorsen said.
Globally, about 18 percent of all new cars sold last year were EVs, according to the International Energy Agency. Electric cars and trucks made up 60 percent of new vehicle sales in China, about a quarter of vehicle sales in Europe and just under 10 percent of sales in the United States.
Although global EV sales are growing quickly, they’re not rising as fast in the United States as some carmakers expected. Rising interest rates, a lagging charging network and growing partisanship have cooled some of Americans’ enthusiasm for electric cars, prompting automakers to slow-roll their plans for new EV lineups.
The automotive consulting firm J.D. Power lowered its expectations for U.S. EV sales this year from 12 percent of new cars to 9 percent. Less than 1 percent of the cars on the road in the United States are electric, according to the firm.
