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Tesla's $110,000 Model S is now Norway’s best-selling car
- cstrat 13y agoI hope to see the Telsa become a big hit in Australia. Right now I couldn't have one since my apartment complex wouldn't support charging - however if the government ran a subsidy program to retrofit complexes I would definitely look at buying one!
- redact207 13y agoMe too, though given the stance the government has taken on climate change and investment into the future, it's unlikely such subsidies will be significant or fast coming. And retrofitting apartments would be great, but again given the track record with the NBN rollout, you really have to ask how committed they are to infrastructure projects. Also brown/black outs happen during summer as the grid struggles to keep up with the increased demand. Adding EC to that? Yeesh. Tangent: I'm all for EVs, but paradoxically they are really quiet - as in silent if they're coming up behind you. If you've ever been on the footpath, turned casually to cross the road only for a cyclist to rush past you out of nowhere it's really frightening like someone jumping out and yelling "boo". Can only imagine once we transition away from fossil fuels.
- oblio 13y agoNow imagine tens of thousands of mostly quiet, non-polluting cars on a very crowded high way. It would be amazing for the environment. And for the neighboring residential areas ;)
- cynix 13y agoAnother issue is that the price here in Australia will likely be double the US price.
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- taralx 13y agoDoes anyone know what's behind this? Is it that people don't buy a lot of cars in Norway? Average income is significantly higher? Different income profile of car buyers specifically? Some kind of social effect, like prestige?
- cremnob 13y agoHigh taxes on gas fueled cars make Tesla afordable.
- cstrat 13y ago"because of the punitive taxes Norway’s government levies on cars with big, gas-guzzling engines" I guess people wanting a fast modern car would have to pay out their nose for one if its fossil fuel powered.
- glesica 13y agoYes, Norway is very, very wealthy. This is a fairly recent development... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=norway+wealthy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=norway+wealthy
- frewsxcv 13y agoI don't think it's that recent, I feel like they've been pretty 'wealthy' for a while. Interestingly, NOK-EUR YTD hasn't been that great http://ur1.ca/fuyz4 http://ur1.ca/fuyz4
- greenyoda 13y agoMany versions of this story have already been posted: https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tesla+norway https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tesla+norway
- jeddi 13y agoI think Oslo consistently comes in each year as the most expensive city to live in -- so at $110,000 it may also be Norway's cheapest car.
- sbrekken 13y agoThe article fails to mention a bunch of other benefits of owning an electric in Norway: - No annual road tax and virtually no sales tax - You're allowed to drive in the bus lane which is huge for suburb communters. - Free communal parking - Free passage through tolls and ferries - Free charging at communal charging stations (they're everywhere in Oslo)
- akavel 13y agoQuoting a fragment: "Electric cars have been especially popular in Norway because of generous subsidies, free parking, government-provided re-charging stations, the right to use express lanes on highways and exemptions from tolls." or wasn't that fragment there earlier?
- thomasfl 13y agoBesides: - Norway has the highest taxes anywhere on buying and using gas cars. Horsepower and weight is taxed heavily. - Urban sprawl around the biggest cities has created some of Europe's worst traffic congestions. It's a huge benefit to be able to use the bus lane. Teslas high market share in Norway is also a symptom of some of the challenges we face here in Norway.
- vidarh 13y agoI find the idea of "urban sprawl" in Norway hilarious.... I'm from Oslo, but live in a London suburb that is larger than the "urban sprawl" around Oslo. Norwegians for the most part has no idea what proper congestion looks like.
- davedx 13y agoYeah, when I visited Oslo we walked at a leisurely stroll from Maridalsvannet just outside the city back to our city centre hostel in a couple of hours (me, my sister and my 60 yo mother). In about the same time in London I can get from the Thames to Tufnell Park, not even close to the North Circular :) Of course, many of the world's capitals pale in comparison to cities like London or NYC...
- capisce 13y agoA big reason for the Tesla Model S being the best selling car last month is that a lot of people have been on waiting lists for months to buy one, and they only started selling them in August. Not to say that it won't keep selling well with all the benefits specific to electric vehicles in Norway.
- matponta 13y agoI was in Oslo last May, saw my first Tesla Roadster... They tell me it's actually a pretty cheap car - or rather, all other cars are crazy expansive - because of taxes on internal combustion cars...
- TobbenTM 13y agoThat, and the USD is quite cheap.
- zerr 13y agoInteresting. One fellow Norwegian client was assuring me - the country is rich, but people don't have money. I understood this as one of the perils of socialism.
- marvin 13y agoPeople do have money. The median salary is on the order of ~$75,000/year. But everyting is so expensive that you don't get the class division that can be observed in the UK and US. (It is also a part of our culture to not have distinct social classes).
- dooptroop 13y agoThat's more the perils of being born with a golden spoon so far up your ass you start complaining because the back of your mouth tastes like poo.
- kristofferR 13y agoNorway is not a socalistic country, that's just absurd (unless you are on the right wing of US politics - where everything left of for-profit healthcare is socialism/marxism/communism). Our cost of living is often absurdly high though, and the increased wages can't completely make up the difference (it's AWESOME for travel though). Therefore we can't afford as much "stuff" as Americans can, but I think it's worth it due to increased quality of life the Norwegian system brings.
- davidw 13y ago> I think it's worth it due to increased quality of life the Norwegian system brings. I visited Oslo a few years back, very briefly, and indeed it did seem like a very nice and well run place. But no amount of nice social systems will buy you sunshine, so I'm still here in Italy.
- kristofferR 13y agoTrue. I despise the Norwegian winter. I'll get through it this year, but I'll likely find somewhere warmer to be next winter. The summer in Norway on the other hand is magical. I didn't realize what a huge privilege is it to be able to chill/drink beer/barbecue in the park the whole evening and watch the sunset at 23/11PM (or the whole night in the north of Norway) until I lived in Thailand for a year (where the sun always goes down around 18-19). Sure, it's always warm there, but I really missed the long summer nights. Living far away from the equator has both its advantages and disadvantages.
- hanspeide 13y agoI believe this article is inaccurate. A lot of people preordered the Model S, and a lot of those were delivered and paid for (upfront payment excluded) in September, which caused the Model S to be positioned in the top of the chart.
- kayoone 13y agoThis is the direct result of what happens when similar specced petrol cars are just way more expensive (taxes) than electric cars. So if any government wants to embrace the use of ecars, this is one way to do it! Governments of countries with a healthy car industry would be hesitant to do this though.
- m_mueller 13y agoAs a fan of Tesla I'm still skeptical whether tax incentives are the way to go - the reason is that I'm not yet convinced that battery powered cars are a sustainable way to replace all the petrol powered ones. In general it seems to me that internalizing all costs of transport is the way to go. This would mean higher fuel costs, possibly slightly higher cost of electric vehicles and also higher cost of public transport. There should be a clear incentive for people to move as close as possible to where they work, or to work from home. Some incentives to steer the economy in that direction could be helpful at first, for example subsidizing company housing or directly subsidizing people to move close to their job (the higher amount, the closer the family moves), offsetting high rent in places with lots of work.
- Shivetya 13y agoMy issue with tax incentives is that they are given without regard to income level of the buyers. I do not believe tax incentives should be given to the companies that produce the cars, only to the public who buys them and then only weighed against income level. Get the middle class into these electrics, if the rich want them there is no reason the middle class should subsidize their purchase
- sokoloff 13y agoBe careful with that line of reasoning. Rich people respond to tax incentives more than the middle class in a lot of respects (because they have more economic freedom), and some of the draw for the upper middle class is that the Tesla is a rich person's car/status symbol. Making the rich move back to MB S-class and Porsche 911s and you take away at least part of the allure for the numerically larger upper-middle class. Plus, realistically, do you really want to differentially encourage a $75 K/yr household to buy a car that's not economically rational/healthy for them to buy? You want more Teslas on the road via incentives? You have to give the incentives to the people who can afford them...
- SuperChihuahua 13y agoElectric cars in Norway: - Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric, the same number in US is 0.1 percent. - The number of electric cars on the Norwegian roads today is 7 000, and the total amount of cars is 2.4 million. The neighboring country Sweden has 4.4 million cars, but only 600 of those are electric. - About 40 percent of those who own an electric car also own a gasoline car. - The goal of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association is to have 100 000 electric cars in Norway within year 2020. - The Norwegians have earlier tried to produce electric cars through the company Think Global. For the fourth time in twenty years, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
- svantana 13y ago> - Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric Even better, that number is already outdated - the article states that the Model S has a 5.1% market share already. It should be noted though that the Norwegians can afford to be environmental - they make ridiculous amounts of money from their offshore oil fields. Also, they have plenty of cheap electricity from hydro.
- hrkristian 13y agoThat is a misnomer. Oil accounts for about 22% of our GDP. Fact is, GDP per capita is only so much higher than that of the US, about 10% I'd say. We can "afford to be environmental" the same way any country would be able to afford to be. The real difference is our wealth distribution which is leaps and bounds ahead of most of the world, here in Norway a higher percentage of the population are simply able to afford the car and that is what we're seeing in Tesla's market share.
- sspiff 13y agoAlso, having access to cheap oil/your own oil is probably not the best stimulus for electrical car ownership, so I think there's definitely more going on than that :)
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- axx 13y agoMy assumption is, that Tesla gets a lot of "free" marketing because they're the only "real" electric car company for now. I'm really happy for them, but i believe that as soon as Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi etc. can affort to make "cheap" but great electirc cars, nobody will talk about Tesla anymore. In germany, for example, it's really expensive to own a car (insurance etc.) but it's even more expensive to drive one. You need to pay between 1,36 and 1,85 Euro per Liter (Cars have between 40-70 Liter tanks) and people _still_ don't buy electric cars. My guess is, that many people trust those big companies and don't want to buy a expensive car from a company they never heard of. As soon as all those german companies have a good mass-product solution for electric motors, they can scale them from an Audi A1 to an Audi A7 and people will buy them instantly.
- jgreen10 13y agoTesla's technology is so far ahead of other manufacturers that people will probably have heard of Tesla long before BMW et al. catch up.
- hef19898 13y agoThat's the point I'm not sure. COnsidering the fact that the biggest innovation the big german manufacturers had in last couple of years were new assisstant systems, I highly doubt they are in any position to actually built usable electric cars. The notable exception being BMW. And even they are far behind Tesla for now and had to fight considerable internal resistance to get the i3 project running. I highly assume they are ready for some tough times if they don't prepare for a changed market. Exports to the US and Asia won't save them forever. And once the infrastructure for EVs is in place it will become practical to drive EVs. I only hope for the German economy that car manufacturers learned the lessons from former German camera and TV set manufacturers.
- blktiger 13y agoI wonder how much company size impacts the ability for auto manufacturers to innovate. Seems like (in general) the larger a company is, the more slowly they innovate. Tesla has ~3,000 employees while BMW has ~100,000 according to wikipedia. Perhaps that means that Tesla can move much faster and will be able to out-pace the larger auto manufacturers?
- chollida1 13y ago> One of those secondhand buyers, 27-years-old financial consultant Anders Langset, said a regular car with similar performance and engine size could have cost him up to 2 million crowns ($330,000) because of the punitive taxes Norway’s government levies on cars with big, gas-guzzling engines. Wow, if that's correct, then good on both the government and people for trying to move in the direction of gasoline independence. I guess in Canada and the US we are too intertwined with the car industry to do something similar.
- timc3 13y agoGasoline independence? You realise that they have large amounts of oil?
- frogpelt 13y agoKeywords: Punitive taxes.
- alephnil 13y agoOne of the main reasons is that ordinary cars are heavily taxed, while electric cars are not taxed at all. This makes a Model S cheaper than most BMW or Mercedeses for example. Add to this that electricity is cheap, while fuel is expensive. Also, Norway's wealth is relatively evenly distributed while at the same time the GDP is high. All these reasons makes it affordable for a lot of people to Buy a Tesla Model S. While I have seen a few Model S on the road, I can't commute to job without passing a quite a few Nissan Leaf. Those have been sold in large numbers here (3% of all cars sold first half of 2013).
- Gravityloss 13y agoTake this with a grain of salt as I read it as a blog comment, but it's been argued that this is only a temporary thing, because of a pile up of orders for a long time and now a sudden delivery.