During the year 2022, Norway had the highest registration rate of new electric vehicles, reaching 80%, which is a new world record, according to data released on Monday by a specialized body.
Driven by the sales of the American group Tesla, which leads the list of manufacturers with a market share of 12.2%, 138,265 new electric cars were sold in the Scandinavian country last year, or 79.3% of total sales of new cars, according to the Media Traffic Board.
Thus Norway, a large producer of hydrocarbons and one of the most important countries in the world for the diffusion of zero-emission cars, broke the record it had also set in 2021 (64.5%).
By comparison, electric vehicles accounted for 8.6% of all new cars registered in the European Union in the first nine months of 2022.
In December alone, electric cars accounted for 82.8% of sales in Norway, as Norwegian households scrambled to buy these vehicles before a tax increase took effect.
Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling car in Norway last year, accounting for one in ten new cars registered, ahead of the ID.4 (Volkswagen) and Enyaq (Skoda), both also electric models.
With over 17,000 copies sold, the group owned by billionaire Elon Musk has broken the domestic sales record, held by the famous Volkswagen Beetle since 1969.
Norway aims for all its new cars to be emission-free, i.e. run entirely on electricity or hydrogen, from 2025, and is counting, in particular, on an encouraging fiscal policy to achieve this goal.
