Norway is the first country where more than half of cars are electric

Norway is an impressive country, especially when it comes to beating its own records. This time, the subject is electric cars. A year ago, the media reported that in 2017, 52% of cars sold in the country were electric hybrids. Earlier this year, the numbers were already over 60%.

Now that Norway is officially the first country in the world where more than half of the cars sold are electric, it is time to set aside hybrids.

Car Reproduction / Rental

This past Monday (01/04), the Norwegian Highways Federation (NRF) released the news that they surpassed the numbers in the adoption of electric cars at the end of March: 58.4% of cars sold were electric. The evolution over a period of one year was very significant. By way of comparison, in 2017, the country had a 20.8% rate on the sale of these vehicles. Just a year later, the numbers grew by 31.2%.

As a result, expectations for the first quarter of 2019 were very high: sales were estimated to reach 48%. But to the surprise of many, the percentage was much higher - as mentioned in the first paragraph.

The essential factor for change

Reproduction / Blog Mila

In short, Nissan and Tesla entered the game and put very important cards on the table. Nissan's Leaf car was the most quoted car in the year 2018 in Norway. In addition, Tesla introduced its Model 3 in the country. These factors were not foreseen and soared the numbers to salespeople - which blew all the estimated goals.

In the first three months of this year, Tesla sold no less than 5, 822 vehicles in Norway - of which 5, 312 were Model 3s. This means that it currently has 31.7% of the country's electric car market.

Reproduction / Current Insurance

It is worth mentioning that these companies were not solely responsible for the change that took place in the Norwegian auto market. After all, the government of the country has been responsible for promoting various actions in this direction, aiming to meet its goals - at least - in the medium term. For example, there are great incentives for those who purchase automatic vehicles; such as access to special lanes, exemption from certain taxes and tolls.

In addition, the country aims to build a recharge system that includes at least two stations every 50 kilometers, making it easier for fans of automatic models. This is just one more point of the aggressive implementation plan: by the year 2025, all cars sold on Norwegian territory are estimated to be electric.