Electric-vehicle sales hit a record high in Norway

Sales of new electric cars in Norway hit a record high in 2019, reaching 42.4% of all newly registered cars in 2019, mostly thanks to strong demand for Tesla’s Model 3.

Norway, a major oil producer that has pioneered electric mobility, offers an advantageous tax regime for clean vehicles, making them competitive in cost terms against petrol and diesel vehicles. New e-car models arriving on the market should help push their share higher still this year, said OFV, a body that monitors Norway’s car market.

In 2019, 60,316 all-electric new cars were sold in Norway out of a total of 142,381, a rise of 30.8% from the previous year, when the market share of e-cars was 31.2%.

The Norwegian car importer association said it expects e-cars to take market share for new cars of 55%-60% in 2020.

New models including the Volkswagen ID.3, the Ford Mustang Mach-e, the Polestar 2 and the Peugeot e-208 are expected to boost e-car sales.

“Today, in 2020 and in the years to come, a much larger range of cars is coming, with increased autonomy, greater size and in affordable price segments,” said OFV boss Oyvind Solberg Thorsen.

Tesla was the biggest single seller of e-cars in Norway in 2019, with its latest Model 3 alone selling 15,700 units.

Norway’s Electric Vehicle Association called the numbers

“very positive” but told AFP it had hoped for e-cars to account for 50% of new car sales by 2019. Association secretarygeneral Christina Bu called on the government to maintain tax breaks for e-cars — the topic of much debate in the Scandinavian country.

Norway, where electricity is almost exclusively generated by hydropower, has a 2025 target for all new cars to be zero-emission models. Hybrid cars, which run on both thermal and electric energy, accounted for 25.9% of the new-car market in Norway in 2019, while petrol and diesel cars accounted for about 16% each.

Only 154 electric cars were sold in SA last year, representing just 0.03% of the 508,570 market total.