An electric car charging station in Oslo. By Softulka @ Shutterstock.com
For the first time ever, electric cars have outsold fossil fueled cars in Norway for a month. In March, 58% of all car sales were of electric vehicles. NPR’s Bill Chappell reports:
Electric vehicles are now the norm in Norway when it comes to new car sales, accounting for 58 percent of all car sales in March. Tesla’s mass market Model 3 was especially popular, accounting for nearly 30 percent of new passenger vehicle sales, the Norwegian Information Council for Road Traffic, or OFV, says.
The figures reflect Norway’s desire to move away from fossil-fuel vehicles — with help from lucrative government incentives for owners of electric vehicles.
Overall, 18,375 new passenger cars were registered in Norway last month, the OFV says. Of those vehicles, 10,732 were rated with zero emissions — a gain of about 100 percent from the previous March. And nearly all of those vehicles are electric (four are hydrogen-powered).
Norwegian car buyers registered more than 5,300 Tesla Model 3 sedans in March — a record for a single car model in one month, the OFV says. In that same period, no other carmaker had more than 10 percent of sales.
In addition to the all-electric vehicles, 3,469 new hybrid cars were sold, reflecting a 10 percent drop from March 2018.
As Reuters reports, “In 2018, Norway’s fully electric car sales rose to a record 31.2 percent market share from 20.8 percent in 2017, far ahead of any other nation, and buyers had to wait as producers struggled to keep up with demand.”
Read more here.