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Summary
Norway leads the world in electric vehicle (EV) adoption, with EVs making up nearly 90% of new car sales in 2024 and over 30% of all cars on its roads.
This shift, driven by decades of policies like tax exemptions for EVs, higher taxes on fossil fuel cars, and perks like free parking, has put Norway on track to phase out new fossil fuel car sales by 2025.
The country’s wealth, renewable hydroelectric power, and extensive charging network have enabled its EV revolution, serving as a model for other nations.
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First of all: way to go Norway! 🥳
Additionally, bravo to the BBC for selecting a pic of one of the most Norwegian-looking people in existence for the article pic 😂
Dude!!? All 2000 cars???
Educate yourself it’s 1999 cars Gunderson passed last night in a car crash
But what about batteries which also poising environment after extraction.
So now that Norway has 99% renewables and will soon reach 99% electric vehicles, they’ll stop drilling oil in the North Sea, right?
They’re best positioned for the Contraction and Convergence strategy so continuing to pump and sell oil is antithetical to their sustainability stance.
Unless they’re creating a walled garden while letting everyone else around them burn - tho let’s hope that’s not the case as once the AMOC collapses and brings the likes of 160km/h bomb cyclones to it’s territories it wouldn’t matter how green they’ve been.
That means Norway will sell the fossil fuel they don’t use to somewhere else.
As I said in another comment in this thread:
Now if they truly believed that fossil fuels were needed for a sustainable transition - then surely they would give out their trillions of oil and gas revenue to countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh to help them rebuild from the environmental disasters they’re experiencing to deploy more sustainable infrastructure and housing.
Not specifically about Norway, but richer countries are already providing funds to poorer countries to combat climate change, but it goes to vanity projects and other corruption.
The climate fund is unfortunately a money laundering scheme. Nicaragua is right to be apprehensive of the 2015 Paris climate change accords, believing it doesn’t go far enough. There is no actual legal mechanism to hold countries accountable for missing climate targets. Now that I think about it, Trump pulling out of the 2015 Paris climate deal during his first term is not necessarily a loss, since everyone is doing nothing since the accords were signed. In spite of the small climate wins, every current year is always the hottest year until the subsequent year records the hottest global temperature, always beating the previous year’s record.
When it comes to globally warming they really can’t lose.
Not true, Norway is remarkably warm compared to similar latitudes (i.e. Canada) due to the Gulf Stream and the resulting coastal current. If that collapses the sea will freeze and Norway will no longer be the mild climate it is now.
Congrats Norway.
Amazing how easily it’s happened with barely any effort. We could have fixed climate change 50 years ago but the fossil fuel industry wanted their money so now the earth is fucked
To be absolutely clear, Norway has achieved this by selling oil to other countries. This wasn’t a heroic sacrifice or noble vanguard effort.
The ability to pay for subsidies has no relation to the source of the funds. What matters is GDP, overall national wealth. And Norway is only slightly ahead of the US. Considering the US’s far superior manufacturing capability, if Norway could go all electric, than the US certainly could have by now. Norway’s had to import almost all its electric cars; the US can make its own cars.
Why are you telling me about America?
Because the whole internet is America, at least that’s what Americans think.
I’m kidding, he/she/they probably wanted to provide an example of a country with a similar GDP that is in the exact opposite position.
You mean all that oil money that was spent on lying to the public and bribing politicians could have been spent on solving the problem this whole time?
That does nothing to inhibit this achievement.
Maybe if the rest of us got our collective thumbs out of our asses and started curbing our addiction to fossil fuels they wouldn’t have to sell oil to other countries.
Your comment history seems to be fueled by a lot of hate and misinformation.
Care to point out what hate and misinformation is relevant to this? If other countries didn’t buy their oil, they could not have achieved this. Norway is a small petrostate with a side gig in poaching EU fish. No amount of Irish salmon would have covered the cost of this. If you don’t understand that a country smaller by population than the city of Barcelona exporting the fourth largest amount of natural gas in the world taints this achievement to some degree, you are entitled to your opinion, but it’s not misinformation.
I’m not trying to give them a free pass at selling oil or anything, but this is a much better use of the profits compared to other countries.
I’d rather see a country exporting fossil fuels doing something with that money to not use fossil fuels than give it to Billionaires or something.
If more countries followed their example, there wouldn’t be much demand left for that oil.
Absolutely it is better than not subsidising EV cars. No doubt. My issue is with the original comment painting this as something “barely any effort” implying that any country could do this. This was a unique situation and I’m glad that Norwegians chose to make themselves feel better about being an educated western petrostate bane on the planet by buying themselves EVs instead of feeding it to a king, ceo, sultan or emir.
Any country could do this, and it’s a bigger start than most are making. I think the “barely any effort” bit was relative compared to what other, bigger, richer countries are prioritizing instead.
Maybe it’s not literally effortless but compared to other countries, yeah.
“The country’s wealth, renewable hydroelectric power, and extensive charging network have enabled its EV revolution”
These are not barely any effort. These are huge factors.
But I was told by Susan on Facebook that EVs can’t work in a cold place!
I think Susan meant in cold rural place where it’s hundreds of kilometers to a larger city and days trip to EV maintenance.
Local boy can dismantle and assemble her current Toyota Hilux if necessary.
From a mechanical standpoint, this is a silly argument. I’ve worked on cars for approx. 15 years as a hobby/side hustle, owned a mobile mechanic business for 2.5 years, and worked at a auto shop for a time as well. Trust me, EV’s are far more simple, hardware-wise. You could argue they’re not simple, software-wise, for the average consumer to work on themselves, but that would ignore the relative complexity of modern CANbus systems in new cars, with dozens of subsystems feeding multiple computers, all of which can malfunction and cause problems for the whole system. Such as when an led tail-light breaks and that bricks the whole car, leaving the owner potentially stranded.
ICE vehicles have to rely on and maintain multiple pressurized systems (with dozens of specialized seals), vacuum, dozens (sometimes hundreds) of sensors, relays, and valves, not to mention rapid heat differentials, all of the moving parts with bearings and added weights to counteract various forces…
I love the idea of only having to work on suspension/steering/brakes from time to time. Have a motor issue? Unplug it, undo a few bolts, and put a new one in over a single beer. Sounds awesome to me…
I think you missed the point.
You could argue they’re not simple, software-wise, for the average consumer to work on themselves, but that would ignore the relative complexity of modern CANbus systems in new cars, with dozens of subsystems feeding multiple computers, all of which can malfunction and cause problems for the whole system. Such as when an led tail-light breaks and that bricks the whole car, leaving the owner potentially stranded.
You think people living in middle of nowhere wants a car like this, with nearest approved maintenance with all the correct databus plugins nowhere in sight.
Otherwise agreeing what you posted, and yes many new ICEs have equally complex software and databus systems to control the maintenance infrastructure and keep the money flowing to the manufacturer.
Thanks for writing this. I had zero idea what EVs mean for a mechanic.
Good thing an electric motor requires less maintenance than an ICE. For the rest it’s the same as every car. Only the tires wear down faster, the brakes might rust when you always one-pedal drive and for certain EVs you need to flush and recharge the coolant once in a while.
A guy in the US drives about 40 miles on average a day and there’s evs that can do 10x that now
Yeah. It’s the range that’s killer. EVs can run in cold all day long. But running heavy duty heating to keep the cabin comfortable and the windows clear of ice, plus heating the battery pack to maintain performance, can cut the already overstated manufacturer range down by 30-40% or more. Which can bring a marginally OK travel range in a lot of areas down to “shit this isn’t enough”.
Nowhere near as much of a problem if you keep it plugged in and warm up prior to leaving, which most EVs have a timer feature to do automatically. Gasoline powered vehicles also lose significant range in the cold, it’s just not as noticeable to some because ICE are already extremely inefficient.
Unfortunately this doesn’t help people who can’t charge at home, but that’s an infrastructure/housing issue not an EV issue.
Who can’t charge at home? Who is getting an EV before electricity in their house?
Apartments are seriously lagging on getting EV stations installed. Then there’s the issue of running power from the tenants meter to a dedicated parking spot (which would require cutting up sidewalks and the like). Even on a condo it can be a mess with the HOA.
There are plenty of landlords that won’t allow a tenant to install an EV outlet even on a SFU.
Yes, sorry, I hadn’t thought of apartments. In my defense where I live, having an apartment and having a car rarely overlap, people use public transport.
You don’t need to install an EV outlet to charge at home. EV outlets are convenient but they are just dumb cables. All the interesting technology for charging is in the car itself. You can get plug-in-adapters for charging a car that go into an ordinary socket and they work just as well as the wall mounted direct type.
All you really need is a 50a level 2 charger that’ll plug into any 14-50r receptacle and an available plug. You can then use RV style step down plugs and set the charge current accordingly in your app/console.
Let’s rethink this. The owners could have a dedicated electric line for charging. Then have power stations along the parking spots. People would then use their credit/debit cards to pay for the electricity just like we do at gas pumps.
And then you get landlords/complex owners gouging to charge your car.
They already gouge to park it, I’d like an outlet pls.
Myself, and plenty others. It’s completely doable, just less convenient.
Not everyone has a garage or available outlet at home. That is an infrastructure/housing issue, not an EV issue. You wouldn’t blame a lack of convenient gas stations nearby as an issue with an ICE car, would you?
Am I missing something? While dedicated, wall-mount-style chargers are convenient, car “chargers” are literally just a power adapter. The ones that plug into a socket (outlet?) are functionally the same. They just supply electricity, all the interestingly technology is in the car itself.
Someone mentioned renting apartments which is fair enough, I live in a country where of you’re in an apartment you use public transport so it didn’t factor.
There are multiple kinds, but that’s not the important part here.
Much of the world does not have the infrastructure to allow for most people to charge their car at home at all is what I meant to say, apartments are a great example. Unfortunately public transit in my area is also not great, so a car is required to do much of anything.
If you can’t go anywhere without a car and you can’t charge your car at home, it becomes difficult to justify an EV. But that’s not the EV’s fault, that’s the fault of our infrastructure failing to keep up.
Ideally public transit would be the solution, but some places aren’t likely to see improvements to that for a while.
You wouldn’t blame a lack of convenient gas stations nearby as an issue with an ICE car, would you?
We do it with hydrogen cars… I don’t see the difference here.
The difference is that ICE cars are the gold(bronze? It’s not a high bar… just the one we’re used to) standard to currently beat. When Electric is just as convenient or better than ICE, I’m willing to bet that people will start to argue the other way. We already see it with people who can get away with Electric at home. It’s all they can go on about with how convenient that is… So much so that they seem to forget that it’s only convenient for them because they’re lucky enough to meet the requirements to make it convenient.
Hydrogen cars also suffer from an infrastructure issue, yes….among others, mainly just not being competitive with EVs at all because they’re not really any better at anything except for fueling time.
As an EV owner without the convenience of charging at home, I don’t blame the vehicle. There are plenty of other conveniences that come with one to offset the inconvenience of charging elsewhere.
I’m not sure what point you’re making here apart from “this is the world we live in”, which was never really in doubt.
The point is exactly that… “this is the world we live in”… And as that world evolves, or as technologies and consumer desires changes, what people will complain about will change as well.
If there were no gas stations around… I would blame ICE cars for needing gas and thus would choose something else that fits my needs better. The point is that infrastructure exists and is part of the package of buying the vehicle. It’s fair game for discussion, and thus blame.
As an EV owner, you’re not wrong about heating the cabin taking like 30% of the range, but the battery heater is a drop in the bucket by comparison.
I know it’s not much vs the cabin, but every watt matters.
Theres also the the problem that EVs are quite low profile. Shit happens if you hit an ice bolder on the road and your battery casing gets dented.
Hey it’s Karen, let’s not drag Susan in to this.
Norwegians aren’t more environmentally-minded than people elsewhere, she reckons. “I don’t think a green mindset has much to do with it. It has to do with strong policies, and people gradually understanding that driving an electric car is possible.”
Yet Norway is also a very wealthy nation, which thanks to its huge oil and gas exports, has a sovereign wealth fund worth more than $1.7tn (£1.3tn). This means it can more easily afford big infrastructure-build projects, and absorb the loss of tax revenue from the sale of petrol and diesel cars and their fuel.
The country also has an abundance of renewable hydro electricity, which accounts for 88% of its production capacity.
I don’t think Norway’s wealth or energy supply has anything to do with it.
Aren’t US taxes on gas cars lower than Norwegian taxes on electric cars? US gasoline is insanely cheap.
Norwegian evs have to pay 25% sales tax over $50k and they’re also taxed based on weight.
https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/
Come to think of it, the US is in the same economic situation as Norway, as an extremely wealthy oil exporter. Any western country jealous of Norway could match it if they just had the political will.
US gas is subsidized by the US government. Norway subsidizes electric cars instead.
https://www.iea.org/reports/fossil-fuels-consumption-subsidies-2022
its huge oil and gas exports
It’s a lot easier for your country to “go green” when being able to do that kind of depends on lots of other places still setting things on fire, innit?
I’m not sure how all the current math shakes out, but I don’t think they do require that. The sovereign wealth fund is making more money on its investments than is being generated by the sale of oil. I think, but me and Jon Snow know all the same stuff about this.
About 127,000 new cars were sold in Norway in 2023. Whether they’re all electric or not is pretty irrelevant when in the same year, Norway exported about 475 million barrels of crude oil.
Oh don’t mistake me for saying their hands are clean or that they aren’t exporting tons of oil. I’m just saying the oil could stop flowing and that fund would keep right on making money.
What are you complaining about? Are you unhappy that Norway takes on many of the issues of going non-reliant of oil, developing systems to handle northern, less benign weather? You know, from where I stand, a few hundred miles south would be a so much easier place to be, where the sun is plentiful all year long and the winters short and mild…
As noted above - Norway gets most of it’s renewable energy from it’s geographic location (88% of power coming from hydro) so them being “a few hundred miles south” would mean extreme heats and droughts that are really difficult to deal with even with perfect renewables - all the sun in the world can’t give you free water (yes there’s desalination but hypersaline brine is such a PIA that it’s not a silver bullet) - so while it’s commendable that they’ve gone “fully green” - until they stop making bank on their massive scope 3 fossil fuel emissions - it’s a bit of a misdirection to say they’re helping the global environment.
Now if they truly believed that fossil fuels were needed for a sustainable transition - then surely they would give out their trillions of oil and gas revenue to countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh to help them rebuild from the environmental disasters they’re experiencing to deploy more sustainable infrastructure and housing.
Hog foot then!
It’s not free parking anymore for a while now
Yeah, but having that temporarily has helped people transition, is the point.
