Most New Cars in Norway Are Evs. How a Freezing Country Beat Range Anxiety.

Yomiuri Shimbun

2 days ago

Salwan Georges/The Washington Post
New cars parked at a port in Drammen, Norway.
FINNMARK, Norway – Just a few years ago, almost no one drove electric vehicles up here. In this remote region north of the Arctic Circle – where reindeer outnumber people, avalanches can bury roads in winter and sunlight disappears for weeks – 'range anxiety' takes on a new meaning.
Today, however, nearly all new car sales in Norway are electric. That's true even in Finnmark, the northernmost region in Europe's northernmost country.
Norway is 'an unlikely place for a transportation revolution,' acknowledged Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association.
At the Skoda dealership in Alta, Finnmark's largest city, salesman Orjan Dragland marveled at the transformation – how five years ago, every car on the showroom floor had a combustion engine, and now the inventory is all EVs.
In 2024, nearly 90 percent of new passenger cars sold in Norway were fully electric. Of the cars sold last month, the EV share was 97 percent.
By comparison, EVs last year accounted for 8 percent of new car sales in the United States, 13 percent in the euro zone and 27 percent in China.
'What happened' in Norway? Dragland said. 'The government happened.'
Norway has one of the world's most ambitious climate targets. It is aiming to become carbon neutral by 2030, and cutting emissions from road traffic is an important part of that. While the push for EVs has played to people's green sensibilities, the real driver, arguably, has been economic: Generous government incentives, supported at least indirectly by the country's fossil fuel profits, have brought down the cost of owning and operating an EV.
'It's very cheap to drive,' said Ailo Haetta, 43. He had just driven his sister and her new husband to their wedding – which explained his traditional Sami dress and the 'Just Married' sticker on his electric Volkswagen.
More-affordable EVs helped accelerate other aspects of Norway's effort to decarbonize its car fleet. Private entities became more willing to take the risk of installing charging stations. And as charging stations began to blanket the country, Norwegians grew more comfortable with EVs.
'The Norwegian experience is really about building confidence,' said transportation research scientist Simen Rostad Saether.
Making EVs the more affordable choice
It has taken 25 years for Norway to get this far. The government began championing EVs in the early 1990s, with the hope of growing a domestic EV industry while cutting carbon emissions.
The Norwegian EV-makers failed. Norway today imports all of its electric vehicles.
But Norwegian drivers proved eager to buy EVs souped up by government incentives.
Most significant, the government made EV purchases and leases exempt from a 25 percent value-added tax (VAT) – cutting thousands of dollars from the sticker prices – as well as from import and registration taxes.
As EVs began to outnumber gas-powered cars on the road, the government scaled back some of the perks. VAT is now assessed over a certain purchase price. EV owners no longer get out of paying city parking fees and annual road taxes. Exemptions from highway tolls and ferry fares have been replaced by discounts.
Still, many EVs in Norway are cheaper than or comparable in price to combustion cars – and they cost less to maintain, especially in the context of Europe's high fuel prices (which in Norway incorporate a carbon tax).
Elsewhere on the continent, gas-powered cars tend to be subject to lower taxes, and EVs often remain the more expensive choice. Felipe Munoz, an automotive expert at JATO Dynamics, noted that the price of compact electric cars averaged 32,700 euros in the euro zone last year, vs. 19,000 euros for gas ones.
'When you have these big gaps, you understand why people make the decisions they do,' he said.
Norway's EV experiment has been made possible by something of a paradox: The country is Europe's largest oil and gas producer, which helps support Norwegians' aspiration to live green. Norway has invested its fossil fuel profits into what has become the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, a nest egg worth $1.7 trillion. Returns from that fund help cover government expenses, which in turn makes it easier to accommodate climate-friendly tax exemptions.
The government estimates that between 2007 and 2025, it will have forgone approximately 640 billion kroner (about $62 billion) in various vehicle-related taxes, mostly because of EVs.
Norway's wealth means its EV model may not be easy to replicate everywhere. But countries seeking to boost EV adoption wouldn't have to spend as much now, said Rostad Sæther, who is part of the SINTEF research institute. With EV prices dropping globally, he said, other countries could focus less on the cost of cars and more on encouraging infrastructure and trust.
Building the charging network
Gjermund Pleym Wik is such an evangelizer for EVs that he has organized electric-car convoys through remote, mountainous areas in the far north to ease people's range concerns.
Salwan Georges/The Washington Post
A taxi driver charges his electric car at a station in Alta, Norway
'Yes, you need to stop and recharge, but it works,' he said, jabbing his finger at a map on a blue display board at Alta's largest charging station.
Norway is a long, narrow country with 60,000 miles of roads that snake around fjords and mountainous terrain.
Wik, who works in public health, admits that he once miscalculated the distance of a trip and had to unplug a stranger's Christmas lights to recharge. But EV fans say that shouldn't be any more of a deterrent than the prospect of running out of gas.
Norway has worked to ensure that drivers are never far from a charging point. Most people charge their EVs at home, and a legal 'right to charge' guarantees access for apartment dwellers. The country also has an extensive charging network – powered almost entirely by renewables – with 9,771 fast chargers in 1,684 locations, according to Lars Lund Godbolt, who maintains the government's database.
Godbolt said the longest distance between two fast-charging stations in Finnmark is about 80 miles, and officials say Norway easily bests the European Union target of 60 km (37 miles) between fast chargers on major roads.
In one sense, that might not be so hard to achieve in a nation the size of New Mexico. But consider that New Mexico has only 419 fast charging ports, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In terms of population numbers, Norway is close to South Carolina. But when it comes to fast EV chargers, the gap is yawning: South Carolina has 633 fast charging ports, according to the federal database – around 11 per 100,000 people. Norway, on the other hand, boasts 174 fast chargers per 100,000.
The lack of charging infrastructure remains a major barrier to EV adoption in the United States. And that hesitancy, in turn, is deterring private investment in infrastructure to support EVs. Building and maintaining chargers is expensive, and in many areas, there isn't enough driver demand to make stations profitable.
To speed up deployment, the Biden administration launched the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, allocating $5 billion to help states build chargers along key highway corridors, with the goal of reaching 500,000 stations by 2030. The Trump administration, which opposes federal support for electric vehicles, has frozen funding for the program – a freeze that remains in effect although the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has said withholding the funds approved by Congress is unlawful.
In Norway, the government played an active role in initially establishing the charging network. In some cases, to ensure that chargers were placed at regular intervals on main roads, it subsidized up to 100 percent of the installation costs through competitive tenders from 'charging operators.' But since June 2022, new passenger EV charging stations have been built entirely on a commercial basis. (The government continues to support the charging infrastructure for heavy-duty vehicles.)
As more charging stations appeared, consumer confidence grew. And as EV ownership expanded, more private entities were willing to take on the risk of building stations. With so many people driving EVs, charging operators could count on a healthy level of business.
Some of the stations The Washington Post visited in Oslo offered WiFi and hot food in a small cafe – a place where customers charging their EVs could spend time, and money.
Will Norway reach 100 percent?
In 2017, Norway set a goal that by 2025 it would have 100 percent zero-emission new car sales. It is close but may fall a few percentage points short.
Some climate advocates argue for a ban on imports of fossil fuel cars, like the one Ethiopia introduced last year. Others say reaching a percentage in the high 90s is good enough.
'There's a lot of debate over: 'Do we really need the last 2 or 3 percent? Could those people have a hybrid? Should we use our energy to fight the last percent?'' Rostad Sæther said.
Norway still has a ways to go in transitioning its fleet of vehicles on the roads. Last year, it became the first country where EVs outnumber gas cars. But as a result of past encouragement of diesel as a transition fuel, diesel vehicles account for about a third of all cars and trucks – and those may last for years.
Some Norwegians have bought an EV not as a replacement but as a second car – to test it out. Askill Halse, an economist at TØI, a transportation research center, said Norway has seen a 'big increase' in car ownership and a modest uptick in overall traffic, despite other policies aimed at reducing driving. Environmentalists argue that the goal should not be more electric cars, but simply fewer cars.
In Finnmark – known for its northern lights, striking fjords and vast tundra expanses – there is lingering discomfort with EVs. Last year, 74 percent of new car sales in the region were electric, lagging the national numbers.
Proposed copper mining projects, vital for EV batteries, have drawn criticism from Indigenous Sami communities and environmentalists.
'Maybe they should search somewhere where the people aren't as close to the nature,' said Ann-Kristine Bongo, 48, a reindeer herder who drives an EV.
Interviews with locals highlighted other concerns: inconvenient charging apps, long waits at charging stations and reduced winter range.
The Norwegian Automobile Federation determined that EVs have an average range loss of about 20 percent in cold weather. Opting for a heat pump to warm the cabin, rather than relying on the battery, can help. One driver said he wears a snowsuit on exceptionally cold days to save battery on cabin heat.
Carpenter Tormod Simonsen, 21, said he didn't yet trust an EV for traveling to the mountains. 'I've gotten stuck many times – road closures, avalanches,' he said, filling up his gas-powered Volvo at a gas station in Alta. 'If I just drove in the city, okay. But in the mountains? You need to trust your ride.'
A growing number of Norwegians, though, are being won over, with many citing cost as the primary motivator. Taxi driver Tommi Olsen estimated that switching to an EV has cut his expenses by about 20 percent. Alta's main taxi company is now 75 percent electric, aiming for 100 percent by October.
Even electric snowmobiles are appearing. Tour guide Jørgen Wisløff tested one for northern lights tours at his 'ice hotel.' But it costs $6,000 more than the gas version. So he said he'd consider buying it if the government offered tax breaks to make the price more competitive.
Wisløff said he's happy, though, with his white electric Ford Mustang, which he noted was cheaper to buy than its gas equivalent. It gets 400 km on a full charge in winter and 500 km in summer – or about 250 miles and 310 miles. With charging points every 70 km (45 miles) or so on his journeys, he said, he rarely worries.
'That's why it's working here in Norway,' he said.