Norway’s Rapid Transition to Electric Transportation

From this article on Norway’s amazing progress in electric vehicle sales:

Electric car market share hit a record high in Norway for the first half of the year as overall car sales have been hit by the pandemic but less so for electric vehicles. Norway has long been the world’s leading market when it comes to electric vehicles. They have the most aggressive electrification goal of any market with the aim to have every new car on the road being electric by 2025.

Considering the world’s average market share for EVs currently stand at around 3%, this is a really ambitious goal, but the nation is tracking well. Last year, 56% of Norway’s new cars were electric (full electric or plug-in hybrids). From the first half of 2020, EV market share in Norway is trending closer to 60% and the all-electric vehicle market share went from 45% to 48% from January through June. By numbers, EV sales are down 19% this year, which is not surprising considering the global pandemic, but market shares are growing because overall car sales are down more than 24% during the year.

Gasoline and diesel vehicles are taking a much bigger hit than EV sales. This is highlighted by Tesla announcing this morning much stronger than anticipated deliveries during the second quarter. However, Tesla is not the one leading EV sales in Norway anymore. The Audi e-tron is leading the pack with over 5,500 electric SUVs delivered in Norway during the first half of the year.

Norway has what it takes to succeed in the phasing out of fossil fuels, and environmental responsibility more generally.  That’s because Norwegian values are egalitarian and progressive, and include openness and equal rights.

Not surprisingly, they kicked COVID-19’s butt, because the willingness to take care of one another is really the only thing that matters in this regard. They had 15 new cases yesterday; we had 55,000.