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Norway EV Push Nears 100 Percent: What's Next?
- hcfman 10mo agoThis is great, so long as the country cares more about becoming electric than tax income. I can assure you that in the Netherlands this is not the case.
- vanviegen 10mo agoAs opposed to the Netherlands, Norway has an abundance of hydro electric power to fuel the cars and significant oil and gas income that can easily finance these policies.
- IshKebab 10mo agoMost countries aren't close to a level of electric car penetration where that would really be a problem. Even in Norway this is new car sales. The actual percentage of cars on the road that are fully electric is 32%. Plus most people charge cars overnight when there's a surplus of power. Oil and gas income I will give you though... I don't think most countries could afford this.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo agoHydro doesn’t really care if it’s used day or night, they can just open or close the gates as needed. It would be more of a thing if they used nuclear or coal, which is hard to ramp up and down.
- ninalanyon 10mo agoThe market cares. We sell electricity to Germany, Denmark, UK, and Sweden. This pushes the prices up at times of high demand in those countries.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo agoYes, but Norway controls the sluice gates and has an idea of when demand is high or low. I guess you could argue that their generation capacity is limited and during peak they simply can't offer anymore, but other than that, Norway can totally ramp down production at night.
- ninalanyon 10mo agoThe demand for electricity in Europe is so high that Norway could sell every watt-hour if the DC links and HV AC backbone had enough capacity. Essentially the only thing preventing Norwegian electricity prices rising to European levels is the lack of capacity in the backbone HV system not the ability to control the generators.
- s17tnet 10mo agoGood for them. Good for "the planet" (and uh... Tesla I suppose). But... most of incentives for the transition has been substantially funded by the nation's massive oil and gas revenues. I wonder what they will do next with that obscene amount of money.
- pcthrowaway 10mo ago> and uh... Tesla I suppose Are Teslas popular in Norway?
- nazgob 10mo agoYes.
- ndr 10mo agoVery. > Tesla was Norway's top-selling car brand for a fifth consecutive year, with a 19.1% market share, followed by Volkswagen at 13.3% of registrations and Volvo Cars at 7.8%. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/norways-new-car-sales-were-96-electric-2025-2026-01-02/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/norway...
- brightball 10mo ago19.1% market share in 2025. https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2026/01/norway-full-year-2025-record-market-39-5-tesla-and-model-y-at-all-time-high/ https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2026/01/norway-full-year-202...
- varjag 10mo agoQuite a bit less now than they used to be but there's still a lot of them.
- simonra 10mo agoOne can argue that the tax revenue losses would be uncomfortably noticeable without the interests extracted from the investments of the oil and gas money. However I’d say it’s more about Norways position on new cars being a luxury good and taxed as so. Which meant that the Norwegian government could make buying electric cars cost half as much as the alternative over night, simply by dropping retail taxes on them to zero. Add another subsidy in the form of reduced annual ownership taxes, and buying unused (electric) cars suddenly became obtainable to a large group. Not to mention simply a stupidly good deal for those without special needs, like living/operating in the less dense areas to the north where the sun doesn’t shine half a year at a time (and the temperatures follow accordingly). You should be able to reproduce it most places though. Just declare new non-electric vehicles a luxury only for the rich and set taxes on new cars to 100%+. (Be sure to define businesses as rich and have popular agreement that they’re unviable if not.) Sell it to current owners as a massive boost to the used price they can get. Then drop the taxes on electric vehicles. After the transition to all new sales being electric, reintroduce the luxury taxation on all vehicles like what Norways government is currently doing, and you’ll get a small boost to the nations finances if you didn’t originally have it.
- padjo 10mo agoIt's fantastic and to be applauded but also worth mentioning that Norway has a truly staggering amount of hydro power (130TWh/y) to support all the increased demand on the grid with carbon neutral electricity.
- HPsquared 10mo agoNorway just keeps winning when it comes to energy. I suppose it's a good thing because it is cold up there.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- yabones 10mo agoThey struck out with food, so it's only fair they got a free money machine from hydro, wind, and oil/gas ;)
- ninalanyon 10mo agoNorway is mostly not that cold. It's 23:00 and -4 C at the moment where I live about 40 km south of Oslo. For comparison it is currently -8 C in Chicago, -13 C in Toronto, -21 C in Moscow, Russia.
- dionian 10mo agoHow much of their imported goods are produced in countries with dirty energy?
- HPsquared 10mo agoNorway will be a good place for datacenters with all that electricity, modern economy and ambient coldness.
- flanked-evergl 10mo agoOur economy is modern in that it has been reorganized to divert tax revenue to unemployed migrants who then use that to buy up property and other goods and services, thus driving up the living cost for taxpayers. There have also been various other initiatives that have significantly driven up the electricity cost and made industry almost entirely non-viable. 10/10 Labour government. Top A #1 top economy. Amazing Inflation creation capabilities and expertise. Everything is better except for the things which are worse which is everything.
- linksnapzz 10mo agoEventually, your leaders will introduce electrified unemployed migrants, which can be fed off of abundant hydropower. Problem solved.
- flanked-evergl 10mo agoHydropower in Norway is dead, it's too effective, so we have to switch to worse options so that Europe can become less competitive and be more vulnerable to the predations of Russia and China.
- linksnapzz 10mo agoI'm sure clearcutting a spruce forest to fill it with solar panels is a good option; to take advantage of the abundant Norwegian sunshine.
- ninalanyon 10mo agoCommercial buildings put solar on the roof and south facing sides.
- mono442 10mo agoNorway is an outlier since it's one of the most affluent countries in the world.
- piva00 10mo agoEvery new technology starts with adoption by the most affluent: cars, telephones, TVs, computers, internet, etc. With those being able to afford when economies of scale didn't kick into very high gear yet enables products to grow into those scales, and less affluent consumers to afford them. So yes, it's an outlier, it's also a sign of a new technology taking hold.
- micromacrofoot 10mo agoSociety generally moves towards affluence, so it's an interesting bellweather.
- hrldcpr 10mo agoaside: interestingly it's spelled bellwether and comes from shepherds putting a bell on a wether (a sheep) — it's unrelated to weather
- micromacrofoot 10mo agoTIL thank you
- sorenjan 10mo agoThere are other affluent countries that doesn't do nearly as well, so there's more to it than that. > Qatar’s EV Market reported an impressive surge, with YTD sales up to September up by 119.6%. However, it remains under 2% of total light vehicle sales, with demand still lagging behind. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to scale up EV adoption in the future, establishing the goal to reach an EV share of 10 percent of domestic sales by 2030 https://www.focus2move.com/qatari-new-vehicles/ https://www.focus2move.com/qatari-new-vehicles/ > In 2024, electric or plug-in hybrid cars made up 28% of new registrations in Switzerland (compared with 30% in 2023). This was the first setback for such vehicles after steady growth since 2015. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-solutions/electric-car-sales-accelerate-worldwide-but-stall-in-switzerland/88828655 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-solutions/electric-car-...
- beardyw 10mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821415
- tallowen 10mo agoA person who drives 12k miles per year in an small vehicle will need about 4000 kWh of electricity or about 600 gallons of gas. Australians are able to buy solar panels that will generate that amount of electricity for a generation for the price of gas for one or two years. Of course there are more costs associated (Installation, batteries, etc) but the cost equation is shifting very quickly. If anything I'm surprised that this is happening in an area that hasn't benefited as much from dramatic reductions in electricity costs (places with Wind + Solar without large tariff regimes) rather than Australia or the southern latitudes of the US.
- ZeroGravitas 10mo agoNorway already had cheap, clean electricity thanks to hydro, so it makes sense they would lead on EVs and heat pumps.
- tonyedgecombe 10mo agoThey also have lots of oil which makes the transition more remarkable.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo agoOil they prefer to export rather than use. They had built up a nice sovereign fund accordingly.
- mekdoonggi 10mo agoNorway has abundant hydropower. But like you've mentioned, this transition will happen in Australia and US, it might just take longer due to incentives. Particularly for the Southern US, I feel that the costs will continue to drop until the transition will be very sudden, and there will be a rude awakening of sorts.
- adefu 10mo agoA rude awakening?
- vintermann 10mo agoI suppose next is either electric air transport, or more/better trains? Trains in Norway are really not great. (Sidenote: Why̱ are they̱ writing their y̱'s like that?)
- epolanski 10mo agoElectric air transport is unlikely to happen for commercial transport. If you replaced 5500 kilograms of fuel with 5500 kilograms of modern batteries, you would need an improvement in battery efficiency of around 20 times. Batteries increase in small % over decades, not by magnitudes. Essentially, you would need batteries that store 20 times as much energy as the best technology does now at the same weight and density. And there's another catch: airplanes burn less fuel as they travel, because burning tons of fuel make them lighter. So it's not really a 1:1 comparison and you likely need more than 20 times to compensate. There's other catches: cooling such batteries would be an engineering nightmare, but safety would be another concern.
- johanvts 10mo agoPower-to-X, ie electrolysis seems a much better path for CO2 neutral flight, and norway is ideal for that as well.
- epolanski 10mo agoGood point.
- Yizahi 10mo agoJust a nitpick - to make anything CO2 neutral, including planes, we need to remove the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere as had been emitted during construction and usage of that thing (a plane or anything else). This is not happening any time soon. The better name would be "Green" or "Eco-friendly" flight, because "CO2 zero" or "CO2 neutral" is impossible for us yet.
- johanvts 10mo ago
- timonoko 10mo agoNorway is also particularly Not Suitable for petrol-powered autos. If you live near Holmenkollen you do not need battery charger at all. With regenerative charging you have already %30 when you are in Oslo and you need only some more charge from Vinmonopolet parking lot to get back home. Basically free energy created from thin air.
- skylurk 10mo agoAlso, many tunnels. Less fumes makes a difference.
- engelo_b 10mo ago[dead]
- Yizahi 10mo agoEastern Europe is ready :) . Most of the small to medium crashes are solved in some way. I was baffled when 5 years ago I was repainting a wing on my ICE car and guys showed me how they are reconstructing aluminum Tesla wings (supposedly those are unrecoverable in the west).
- coolgoose 10mo ago110% :P (or well more public transport so less cars ? :P)
- okokwhatever 10mo agoThe challenge is not the total energy generated by solar, but the instantaneous power capacity. The grid collapses if supply does not perfectly match demand in real-time
- johanvts 10mo agoWith V2G a large EV fleet would actually stabilize the grid.
- mrspuratic 10mo agoHydro can help a lot with that. Grid stability is a big issue with non-synchronous power sources (SNSP).
- kleiba 10mo agoNorway has been on this steady path for quite a while. I remember some years ago, when we still lived in central Europe, I compared the prices for electricity and in Germany, they were about 3x (!) higher per kWh than Norway. Petrol prices, however, were roughly the same.
- matsemann 10mo agoBefore celebrating this too much, I urge people to read this article about how it has actually played out: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-vehicle-cars-evs-tesla-oslo https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-... These subsidies have insentivised more car culture. It hasn't fixed most of the issues around cars, just shifted the type of cars. Even possibly increased the amount of cars in the cities. Cars are dangerous, noisy, needs lots of space, microplastics from the tires etc etc., and we should've spent this money on things that could've helped to remove this reliance on cars. 40 billion NOK in subsidies each year. That's a new metro line every year. Or faster trains between cities. Things that could've improved our cities tremendously. You pay more in taxes for buying a new bike than people pay for a new electric car. It cost more for a ticket on public transport than all toll roads driving an electric car from far away into the city in rush hour. Of course people then drive instead of biking or taking the bus. Yes, the incentives were great and needed in the beginning. But it has gone way, way too far.
- 1970-01-01 10mo ago>noisy Uhhh..
- matsemann 10mo agoAbove ~30 km/h the noise of a car is mainly from the wheels etc., not the motor. Trust me, you don't want to live next to a highway even if all the cars on it are electric!
- xiomrze 10mo agoAdd honking, brakes squeals, people blasting music with open windows, etc.
- 1970-01-01 10mo agoEVs use regen for 99.09% of stops. Honking and loud music is a street problem and has nothing to do with cars. In the horse and carriage days, drivers would be required to carry a bell and whistle to move your butt out of their way.
- curiousgal 10mo agoI find it hilarious that people applaud Norway, whose economy is heavily driven by exporting petroleum gas and crude oil, for leading the world in clean energy adoption.
- tonyedgecombe 10mo agoWell, the easy path would have been to keep burning fossil fuels because they have plenty. Just like the fact I can't stop my neighbours from littering but I can certainly control my own behaviour.
- curiousgal 10mo agoMy point is that whatever is working for them is not even remotely applicable to 90% of the other countries. They are better than Saudi Arabia and other rich countries, but that's about it.
- lizzylot 10mo agoClimate change is a global problem. Fossil fuels burned in Norway or somewhere contributes the same amount of CO2. It's kinda like shipping your plastic trash to another country and have them dumping it into the ocean and going "look how clean we are, 0 plastic trash!"
- tonyedgecombe 10mo agoIs the oil company evil for selling me oil or am I evil for buying it. I know which message is more palatable for the average consumer. I also know that without buyers there would be no sellers.
- ubercore 10mo agoWhat would you like Norway to do? It's been more successful than other countries (generally speaking) insulating its economy from Oil. Would it be better to _not_ also try to drive adoption of clean energy?
- asasidh 10mo agoIt only works until the money printer aka subsidies are around.
- johanvts 10mo agoSubsidies where needed 10 years ago, today the US and EU have to put massive tariffs on mass produced, cheap, superior EVs to keep their own ICE auto industry alive.
- 1970-01-01 10mo agoFinally, an article that satisfactorily answers their headline! Commercial EV adoption is lagging. They will pursue this next.
- fnord77 10mo ago> Battery-electric vehicles have had exemptions from the 25 percent value-added tax and from the CO2- and weight-based registration tax that apply to combustion-engine vehicles. that's not going to last forever