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Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year
- pstrateman 5y agoNorway is an oil welfare state. Comparing anything they do with your own country is a mistake.
- tannhaeuser 5y agoIsn't that a strange thing, considering Norway is vast, has low population density especially in the north, and has own oil resources available?
- FourthProtocol 5y agoScandinavia in general takes global warming more seriously than most other countries on the planet. And so this isn't strange at all. The whole of Europe is amping up alternatives to petrol- and diesel-based transportation, from e-bikes, cargo e-bikes, e-scooters to Teslas and electric Porsches (Taycan), and anything inbetween.
- lastofthemojito 5y agoI'm not sure about the whole of Europe, but certainly the richer countries. https://www.acea.auto/press-release/electric-cars-10-eu-countries-do-not-have-a-single-charging-point-per-100km-of-road/ https://www.acea.auto/press-release/electric-cars-10-eu-coun...
- Unbeliever69 5y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2021/06/19/why-norway-leads-in-evs-and-the-role-played-by-cheap-renewable-electricity/?sh=2d863e28275f https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2021/06/19/why-norway...
- Syonyk 5y agoTheir tax structure on vehicles is such that a loaded Tesla costs about the same as a Civic - the taxes (that are exempt on EVs) are quite massive on new cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N... has extensive details, but they've got a set of incentives that exceedingly favor BEVs.
- digikata 5y agoOne way to avoid the resource curse is to use the bounty of the resource to develop diversified dependencies/capabilities for a future when that resource runs out or is devalued.
- tuatoru 5y agoNorway is wealthy thanks to selling fossil fuels. Norwegians feel guilty about that, but not guilty enough to stop selling them. This is essentially performative environmentalism from them. Still, it will help other countries by throwing up unforeseen problems in all-electric ground transportation, and some solutions.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoI don't think it's a country of virtue signallers as you think, just people who like to get the best bang for their buck. And gas cars as well as fuel get taxed so much, that buying electric makes sense for them. Who would've thunk, economic incentives help!? Sadly in many other places the deciding economic incentives are the ones the politicians get from the oil and ICE car industry.
- bagacrap 5y agoarguably, taxes are the government's way of making the decision for the people, so if by "Norway" gp more accurately meant "the government of Norway", you haven't refuted their claims
- matsemann 5y agoWe (as in the Norwegian population) have voted for politicians supporting this, though. At the election a month ago, it was just a thousand or so votes from being an incredible amount of green representatives.
- bpodgursky 5y agoThe claim is not that the individuals buying cars are signalling, it is the public policy (incentivizing individual EV ownership while exporting carbon emissions) which is hypocritical.
- opinion-is-bad 5y agoNorway also spends a lot of energy criticizing foreign regimes for attempting to follow the same path as Norway; prosperity through natural resource extraction. It’s great that Norway has gotten rich enough to turn the corner, but not every country is so fortunate.
- shkkmo 5y agoNorway isn't really that vast. It's about the size of New Mexico but has twice the population density.
- dagw 5y agoIt's about the size of New Mexico It is however much more spread out. Driving from the northernmost to southern most town of New Mexico is ~700 km. Driving from the southern most to northern most town of Norway is over 2300 km, or about the same has from the southernmost town of New Mexico to the Canadian border.
- shkkmo 5y agoIt's not about the max travelable distance in the country but the max distance actually traveled for most trips. The higher density (and population concentration in the south) reduces the latter and makes maintaining a charging network much more practical (their high adoption rate also help a lot with that.) Edit: The reason why this is the important measure is because what people care about is how often their trips require N charging stops not the maximum number of charging stops they might have to make.
- tannhaeuser 5y agoBut what about those living in the north, in the Fjell, and those working in remote spots such as forests? Are those really served well by EVs, and is it really all that sustainable to subsidy EV?
- kmonsen 5y agoThat's why it's not going to be 100%. Just someone looking at a graph and extrapolating.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoThey are also rich to the tune of $200k saved in the nations coffers for every citizen.
- nerdawson 5y agoThe UK and Norway found oil in the North Sea around the same time. Norway used that revenue to create the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. The UK squandered it on tax cuts.
- robotresearcher 5y agoThat's an awful lot of money. The US National Debt is around $80K per US citizen. The War in Afghanistan cost around $7K per US citizen, based on numbers from Wikipedia.
- tobinfricke 5y agoNorway has plentiful hydropower, so electric cars do make sense there. They do have huge crude oil reserves, but do they have any refining capability?
- magicalhippo 5y ago> do they have any refining capability Only two[1], but one of them is somewhat big[2], producing 4x the domestic consumption of gasoline. [1]: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oljeraffineri#Oljeraffinerier_i_Norge https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oljeraffineri#Oljeraffinerier_... [2]: https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/terminals-and-refineries.html https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/terminals-and-refineri...
- elygre 5y agoIt seems the answer is yes. There are two refineries. According to https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/terminals-and-refineries.html https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/terminals-and-refineri..., Mongstad (the larger of the two) has capacity: "Petrol (gasoline) production at Mongstad is 4 times Norwegian domestic consumption"
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- dogma1138 5y agoWhen a Models S costs about as much as a Mazda 3… what would you buy?
- WalterBright 5y ago20% of Norway's GDP comes from pumping oil out of the ground and selling it for others to burn. If they were really green that would stop.
- belltaco 5y agoStopping it would be useless, it'd just increase production from oil wells of other countries. They could invest that money into accelerating green technology.
- kmonsen 5y agoThat's not useless though. It would drive the price up making it easier to scale up on renewables.
- bdamm 5y agoOnly if there was a large pact of countries doing so. But even that would be dubious, since OPEC and other groups would just increase production. Also there are many oil resources that can be tapped with a slight increase in the prices, so really Norway would just be handing production over to countries like Canada, where local governments would be only too eager to sell the more expensive product.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoThat is under the assumption oil revenues aren’t efficiently spent on speeding the green transition.
- cecilpl2 5y agoTo a first order effect, stopping production would decrease supply, increasing price, and therefore decreasing demand and therefore overall oil usage, shifting some energy to alternative sources. Of course second order effects might dwarf that, like the fact that increasing prices would incentivize oil extraction in currently unprofitable locations. That extraction may or may not be more carbon-intensive than Norway's (though probably more if it's currently unprofitable). It sounds punchy to say "Norway should stop extracting oil" as much as it does to say "It doesn't matter whether they do or not since someone else will", but the reality is much more complex than either of those simplistic zeroth-order approximations.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoWhat a weird forecast, this is like saying "Bitcoin will hit $100k in 3 months." by looking at the price graph. Since people will still be allowed to buy such cars so far, I doubt 100% will ever be reached...
- oleganza 5y agoActually, Bitcoin is likely to hit $100K in about 3 months.
- andrenth 5y agoDoes anyone have a pointer to studies on the effects of electric vehicles in the used car market? I ask because the lifespan of current batteries seems to be around 8 years (going by manufacturers' warranties), and the battery pack amounts to approximately 30% of the price of the car. So people buying an used electric car will likely face a large maintenance cost after a while.
- codazoda 5y agoI’ve seen a stat that most cars only last 10 years in the US. If that’s because we crash or destroy them than the problem is almost non-existent. I own a 25 year old truck but they aren’t very common, so I assume that’s just anecdotal. I’m also not sure if that stat included trucks. I can’t find it to reference it.
- Swenrekcah 5y agoUnless they programmed it to go bad as soon as the warranty expires I wouldn’t be so worried about it. The Tesla model S is about 8 years old now for the earliest models and I don’t think I’ve heard about them going bad.
- The_Beta 5y agoBest I could find with a quick search. I think it's still too early for a proper study. https://insideevs.com/news/405885/tesla-model-s-battery-after-146000-miles/ https://insideevs.com/news/405885/tesla-model-s-battery-afte... https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-replacement/ https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep... https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-battery-last/ https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-ba...
- magicalhippo 5y agoLike changing a broken automatic transmission is a cheap thing. That happened to a friend of mine, who was quoted around 50k NOK (~6k USD) of a car he bought used for twice that. Fortunately for him, it turned out there was one week left of the 5-year "new car" warranty so he didn't have to pay after all, but that was sheer luck.
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- thomasfl 5y agoThere's a huge price difference between electric cars and gas fueled cars here in Norway. Gas fueled car buyers have to pay both 25 percent VAT and an additional tax on purchase. Buyers don't have to pay neither of those taxes if they buy an electric car. The singer of the group A-ha, Morten Harket, bought an electrical car in 1989 and refused to pay road tolls and ignored all the subsequent fines. That got a lot of attention, and Norway ended up having very affordable electrical cars compared to gas fueled cars. Norway is one of Tesla's main market.
- ostenning 5y agoMeanwhile in Australia: electric cars are getting taxed more to support the aging oil infrastructure
- njovin 5y agoSimilar in California and other states. The states typically tax gasoline and since electrics don't use any they are implementing special fees on electric vehicle purchases to make up for lost revenue. One would think that the savings in pollution (not only for the car itself, but the transport of the fuel, pollution from refineries, etc.) would offset any lost revenue from gas taxes. What makes this really nonsensical is that many states still have electric vehicle rebates. They give you a rebate of a few thousand dollars to reward you for buying an electric vehicle but then charge you a few hundred dollars to punish you for buying an electric vehicle.
- lttlrck 5y agoCalifornia is looking at a road usage charge. Longer term, as gas tax revenue drops, it seems inevitable. And other jurisdictions will do the same. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB339 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
- fdr 5y agoEVs still drive on roads.
- LatteLazy 5y agoThere has been a similar big bump in the uk (to 17% not 100 but still...). How much of this is that a lot of legacy companies can't produce anything because they can't get chips?
- noselasd 5y agoMost EVs sold are produced by legacy companies
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoOn the topic of Norwegian oil, a fascinating story of an Iraqi who helped them deal with being an oil-producing nation: https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com... He was an oil expert who met a Norwegian au-pair in London, they got together, married, had a sick kid so they decided to move to Norway, and because he had the whole day before he could take the train from Oslo to her hometown, he decided to visit the Ministry of Industry to get leads on oil jobs...
- dredmorbius 5y agoSomeone's just submitted that to the HN queue. It's very much worth reading.
- jezzzabell 5y agoThat was a great read, thanks. I loved that they highlighted the role of a proper regulatory body as a key factor in the success of the oil industry in Norway.
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoNorway's management of their oil reserves, or more specifically, the profits made from their oil reserves[0], is another lesson in running a country that Australia has failed[1] at even recognizing despite its vast mineral wealth and therefore applicability to future economic stability and strength. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor... [1]: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/july/1435672800/richard-denniss/clowns-and-treasurers https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/july/1435672800/ric...
- findthewords 5y agoIn other words, the market is saturated?
- anonporridge 5y agoIt will be interesting if there comes a point where ICE vehicles are such a small minority of all vehicles, that supporting infrastructure (petrol stations, traditional mechanics, oil change services, etc) starts to collapse and disappear. There may still be some infrastructure for special use cases like long haul trucking or industrial vehicles, but it might become untenable for the average consumer to own an ICE vehicle, just like it was painfully difficult to own an EV before charging stations became widespread. When that happens, it could further accelerate the decommissioning of old vehicles.
- doublesocket 5y agoThe UK's recent fuel shortages have apparently spurred on EV sales so this seems likely.
- anonporridge 5y agoThis makes me wonder if the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack indirectly led to an acceleration of EV adoption. All of these events make more and more people recognize the relative weakness and fragility of an oil based civilization compared to an electric one.
- clouddrover 5y agoYou can have equivalent cyberattacks on power stations and EV charging networks.
- anonporridge 5y agoOf course. But a key difference is that the electric grid seems to be drastically more decentralized than fuel pipelines. Pipelines for liquid or gaseous fuel have a huge upfront cost and maintenance requirements compared to running power lines, so the incentives are to build them as big as possible. Taking down a power station is certainly a viable attack vector, but the damage caused by losing a single station is drastically more manageable than losing a key pipeline that a massive region of the continent needs to feed continuously from to keep civilization running. This is not even accounting for the further decentralizing and ruggedizing effect that comes when every rooftop subsidizes their own energy needs with solar and batteries.
- guerby 5y agoWarning probable pro tesla bias but here is a video about market for EV in other countries than Norway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpLm0uuVgA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpLm0uuVgA "When will we have 100% EV adoption ? Norway was NOT fast, compared to what is coming." BestInTESLA
- riazrizvi 5y agoNorway produces over 93% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources and the rest from wind and thermal ones. I think they have just become the first country to unlock this tech IRL Civ.
- overkill28 5y agoThere are some serious caveats here: > seven out of every eight cars bought and sold in Norway a used car. The NAF’s numbers show that of the 357,176 ownership registration changes so far in 2021, electric vehicles only accounted for 12 per cent. And their definition of electric cars includes hybrids (whereas I think most people interpret it to mean fully electric). So they're obviously doing great but the vast majority of the vehicles in Norway are still ICE only.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoEither people here don't like the truth or they can't be bothered to refute your claims. I don't see how electric can be the way forward. Cars are certainly no fun anymore.
- lonelyasacloud 5y agoIt's good that Norway may hit 100% electric EV. But with ~20% of their economy based on oil and gas production, it's hard not to think of it being funded largely by exporting pollution elsewhere.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoThat’s what I was thinking too. Norway is rich because of oil. They would have serious problems if other countries reduced their carbon emissions.
- thinkcontext 5y agoThe are investing their oil wealth for the day after oil. That's a whole lot smarter than most of the rest of oil exporting countries.
- bamboozled 5y agoI've not owned a car for many years, always get trains and always try live in places where it's fine to walk or cycle. Inner cities, now in a rural village where I'm close to most amenities. Recently I went on a road trip my partner (who really wanted to go), the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how stupid of an activity it was given what we know about our future if we stay on the current trajectory. While driving I was looking around at hundreds of thousands of other people doing the same thing and just got me down. The idea of hundreds of millions of machines driving around emitting carbon dioxide and other pollutants is just so stupid it's hard to imagine we collectively accepted the idea in the first place. It's really hard to believe that none of the externalitiez are factored into the absolutely insane cost of climate change. However, I guess what I really wanted to say by writing this comment is, at least there is some hope :)
- mupuff1234 5y agoI still cant help but think about how wasteful cars are. We basically have these giant energy hungry machines who just sit idle and take up space 95% of the time, and when they are utilized, it's mostly for a single passenger with almost zero luggage.
- yunohn 5y agoNorway, the prime example of “don’t get high off your own supply” re Oil. Quite disingenuous, if you ask me. Refer: https://www.ft.com/content/8574bd97-86e2-4665-9192-93dfde877d52 https://www.ft.com/content/8574bd97-86e2-4665-9192-93dfde877...
- flerp 5y agoA country that made its fortune ( and still does ) largely by oil has the money to quickly jump on a green-washing trend. Hah. Who figured
- djrogers 5y agoPretty misleading title IMHO - from the 3rd para of the article: "In the first eight months of 2021, vehicles without any type of electrification – battery electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid, hybrid – made up less than 10 per cent of (9.66 per cent) new car sales" So by 'electric', they mean what are commonly referred to as 'electrified' vehicles, and by ICE, they are actually referring to pure gas/diesel cars. I have news for you - hybrids still burn gas!