10 ms·
How Norway Built an EV Utopia While the US Is Struggling to Go Electric
- superkuh 3y agoBe a physically small country and have your entire (EV using) population arranged along the coasts using the same few roads and infrastructure (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Norway_population_density.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Norway_p...).
- arcade79 3y agoIt occurs to me that you have no clue when it comes to distances in Norway. Minneapolis to Houston is a 1176 miles drive. Lindesnes to Nordkapp is a 1305 miles drive.
- cpgxiii 3y agoWhile Norway is a very long country, the actual areas amenable to settlement and population density are relatively small. Population is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few metro areas in the southern third of the country, and the long northern section is much more sparsely populated.
- arcade79 3y agoAnd yet, even our more populous cities are less densely populated than several US states.
- qwytw 3y agoOslo to Bergen or Stavanger is still 400-600 km through very mountainous terrain. 1.5 million live in the Oslo metro which is a significant proportion but you're not right at all as far as the rest of the population is concerned.
- personalityson 3y agoNorth to south in Norway = Norway to Italy
- qwytw 3y ago> physically small country That's not exactly true at all relative to population. Sure most of the north is very sparsely inhabited so not that relevant but even the southern coast is not at all dense (compare it with the East and West coasts in the US). And then you have the fjords and mountains which further increase the distances and make infrastructure a lot more expensive.
- kmlx 3y agothere’s 5.5 million people in the whole of norway. what are we talking about?
- arcade79 3y agoWhat's your point? We've got a lower population density than the US.
- kmlx 3y agoit’s tiny. it’s like comparing a village of hundreds to a metropolis like tokyo/nyc/london. totally different problems/solutions. there is no equivalence, there is almost nothing in common between the two. norway should be compared to it’s geo and cultural neighbours, sweden and finland.
- audunw 3y agoSure, if you’ve got 10x the population you’ve got maybe ~10x the area and 10x more stuff to build. But you’ve also got ~10x the amount of capital and 10x the amount of labour. So how is this a valid argument? Maybe this is an excuse for some areas with extreme high population density… something Norway certainly doesn’t have. But then those cities (say New York) generally have public transportation to take some of the load off. It’s not an excuse for, say Portland or Seattle, that looks very similar to the Oslo metropolitan area. And you can just repeat that argument for every medium density 1-5 million population metropolitan area in USA.
- kmlx 3y agoi made the point further down below. shall we compare nyc to a village in italy? we can, but there is literally nothing in common, everything is completely different. you can compare norway to sweden and finland. or the US to canada.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoEvery time Norway comes up as an example… there are 5.5m people in Norway vs 334m in the USA.
- pfdietz 3y agoCan you explain the logic behind this attempt at an excuse?
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoSure. Norway sits at massine natgas and oil reserves. Hundreds of billions in savings, small population, small area with most of the population around a coast make it easy to transition fast.
- pfdietz 3y agoAh, so not just small population.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoNormally I go about „there are almost as many people living in metro Berlin than in Norway”. 5.2m vs 5.5m. Small population with tons of free money to subsidise the transition to ev. > Norway Number of Registered Vehicles was reported at 5,410,000 Unit in Dec 2022. with 110k to 190k new cars registered annually sounds doable, no?
- whyenot 3y agoThis isn’t really explaining the logic behind your original statement. You said “there are 5.5m people in Norway vs 334m in the USA.” Why does the population difference matter so much? As a counterexample, California has over 40 million people and has the highest EV adoption of any US state.
- qwytw 3y agoFor one thing they wouldn't be able to produce 90-100+% of the electricity they need from just from hydro if the population was much higher. Also low population coupled with a lot of revenue from oil/gas means that EVs are much more affordable (or rather ICE cars were very expensive due to taxes, so EVs still seemed like a great deal to many Norwegians despite being very expensive).
- belval 3y ago1. Have a large amount of oil & gas comparatively to your population 2. Sell the oil and gas to Europe 3. Use the money to finance the Utopia I don't want to be too cynical, what Norway is doing is great, but I feel like whenever a case study comes up about why something works, ultimately it boils down to "money". We can go full reductio ad absurdum and write "How Norway Built a free healthcare Utopia While Ethiopia is struggling".
- arcade79 3y agoIt has to be mentioned that Norway spends most of it's petromoney on the Pension Fund. We've got a rule that the government at most can touch 4% of that for whatever they want to do - but they keep it around 2-3% .
- mrits 3y agoEven then it should be compared to a city in the US as they would sometimes not even be a top 10 by metroplex population
- arcade79 3y agoSure, if that city stretched further than the distance from Minneapolis to Houston! We're not exactly a densely population country. We've got enormous distances. A city would be rather easy, wouldn't it? Just pop up some big charging stations around the city in addition to home charging, and that wouldn't be a problem any more. Remember that the population density of Norway is 1/5 of the population density of the US.
- mrits 3y agoSurely you can think of all the reasons a sparse population is easier to maintain. Also you'd only be our 4th largest state so I wouldn't call this "enormous"
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoSo how much do people of Norway have to save up from their income for their pension?
- prepend 3y agoI guess having your whole economy pretty wealthy based on fossil fuels and relying on US innovation in developing EV infrastructure helps. This kind of reminds me of those “I’m debt free and have $500k savings at 25” type posts where the secret is having rich parents who pay for your college, network you into a good job, live at home and pay all expenses so 100% of salary goes into savings. I mean, it’s cool for the poster, but I’m not sure how any of that is generalizable to me. Or to countries other than Norway. I don’t see Liberia or Oman (similar populations) drawing too many useful ideas from Norway.
- kurthr 3y agoI agree with you, but it does show that having a competent government can make amazing things possible, and having a dysfunctional one with massive corruption makes it impossible. Not Liberia or Oman, but Nigeria, Angola, and Uganda have the resources to do something similar.
- colechristensen 3y agoBe a rich country, have a 25% tax on cars, discount that to 0% for the first ~$50,000 of EVs, be small so electric infrastructure is easy. Have good public transit so if you’re poor you don’t need a car.
- arcade79 3y agoNorway is not small (distance-wise). But we do have electricity production pretty well spread out as we're a mountainous country with plenty of hydropower throughout the entire country.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThe last line is probably only true for oslo. Its a big country with a low population density so I expect most poor rural areas don’t have much to offer. That being said if you are poor you aren’t buying new cars anyhow.
- audunw 3y agoElectric infrastructure is not easy in Norway. You know it’s very mountainous.. right? But Norway does have the benefit that it has relied on electricity for much of its heating for a long time. So the added load of EVs is not huge relatively speaking. Though the surprising thing is just how easy it has been. There’s no reason to think it’d be insurmountable for other countries. We have the same rules of physics here.
- pytonslange 3y agoIt was actually much better than that. The 25% is just the VAT. In addition there is a tax on new cars (fossil and hybrid) with elements for weight, emissions, and before 2017 also power. EVs were initially excempt all taxes, meaning you pretty much get more than twice as much car when chosing an EV. Combine that with no charge for EVs on toll roads (which are abundant here), rather expensive fossil fuels and cheap electricity, and you get a lot of EVs on the road. Great for the local environment, maybe not so great for the climate.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoJust because the US isn’t #1 at something doesn’t mean it’s “news”.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoIn Norway electricity is ridiculously cheap.
- arcade79 3y agoThis used to be true until we joined ACER and built a couple more electric cables. It hasn't been true since about 2021.
- audunw 3y agoPlease don’t repeat the misconception that ACER has anything to do with electricity prices. Norway built plenty of cables before ACER and would have built the exact same cables without it. It’s a complete myth that ACER has anything to do with Norway building more interconnect cables. It has been an explicit energy policy of Norway to be well connected to neighbours because Norway relies on hydro power. And hydro power is unpredictable. There are dry years. Average prices are still pretty damn low. Some periods of high electricity prices during an energy crisis and dry year does not mean Norway has expensive electricity in general.
- hbarka 3y agoIt’s because of Bjorn Nyland. He evangelized EVs in Norway and ten years later here we are. What a difference a decade makes, just like what smartphones did to Nokia.
- bluejekyll 3y agoOne negative thing to point out is that Norway’s policies on the EV are increasing the number of cars on the road (this is stated in the video). People are opting to drive more often than they did before to places that they otherwise would have taking public transit. It makes me wonder if reducing the guilt around car usage has an effect of increasing its usage. People may think of EV car usage as nearly zero cost (hidden in your electric bill), and zero impact on the environment (ignoring the other pollutants that EV cars have, mainly microplastics from tires). It’s an interesting side effect of Norway’s policies.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoI'm of the unpopular opinion that buses should be closed and ride sharing should fill the gap to connect people to light/heavy rail.
- audunw 3y agoDo you have a source for that claim? Norwegian statistics does not agree with you here: https://www.ssb.no/transport-og-reiseliv/landtransport/statistikk/kjorelengder https://www.ssb.no/transport-og-reiseliv/landtransport/stati... https://www.dagsavisen.no/nyheter/2023/06/30/gjennomsnittlig-bilbruk-stuper-bilen-star-stort-sett-stille/#:~:text=I%20fjor%20var%20gjennomsnittlig%20kjørelengde,i%202018%2C%20viser%20SSBs%20oversikter https://www.dagsavisen.no/nyheter/2023/06/30/gjennomsnittlig.... Cars seem to be driven less, per person, not more. Population is increasing. So maybe there are more cars on the road in total? But that’s a a nearly irrelevant measure in this discussion. It also goes directly against my personal experience, and the policies in the big cities makes it nearly impossible to drive more. Our companies moved to a new office, and that office was built without any attached parking. I don’t think you’re allowed to build new building with lots of parking in the city centre anymore. We have some parking spots in a nearby parking garage but it’s a 5min walk away. Meanwhile there’s a brand new huge bike garage in the new building. With bike repair and bike washing equipment. I didn’t use to bike to work, it’s a bit on the long side at 30min each way. But I have started doing it after I got an E-bike. Many coworkers do the same. Young coworkers seem to delay buying their first car longer than I did. Many even bike in winter (I’m not there yet) Traffic on the highway is also not getting worse. It’s actually been fairly smooth ever since the pandemic. I suspect an increase in home office has helped, along with the gradual shift towards more biking and public transportation.