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Electric boom in spite of the cold: In Norway, more electric cars were registered than combustion engines in 2020
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In Norway last year, for the first time, more electric cars were sold than vehicles powered by gasoline, diesel and hybrid engines: in 2020, all-electric electric vehicles made up 54.3 percent of all new cars sold in Norway, according to the Norwegian Road Transport Association ( OFV) announced.
Plug-in hybrids achieved a market share of around 20 percent, while pure diesel and gasoline cars each remained below ten percent.
Norway is the first country in the world to have an electric car quota of over 50 percent.
In 2019, the share of new e-cars was 42.4 percent, a decade earlier it was one percent.
In Germany, the proportion of exclusively electrically powered vehicles was six percent in 2020 (January to November).
Most popular in Norway were electric models from the Volkswagen Group, which overtook its US rival Tesla.
The four best-selling models in the country were the Audi e-tron, the Model 3 from Tesla, the Volkswagen ID.3 and the Nissan Leaf - all with exclusively electric drive.
The VW Golf follows in fifth place.
The e-tron displaced Model 3, which took first place in 2019, to second place.
Norway is considered a pioneering country in electromobility.
Politicians are primarily responsible for the boom: e-cars are almost completely tax-exempt in Norway, so they can keep up with diesel and gasoline-powered cars in terms of price.
The electricity required for electric cars in the country is generated almost exclusively with hydropower.
The aim is for only e-cars to be sold from 2025.
In the last few months of last year in particular, the number of registrations for electric vehicles rose sharply, reaching a market share of 66 percent in December.
This trend is expected to continue in 2021.
"We are currently assuming that electric cars will achieve a market share of over 65 percent in 2021," said Christina Bu from the Norwegian Electric Car Association.
For the diesel, the development is meanwhile in the opposite direction.
Its market share fell from 75.7 percent in 2011 to 8.6 percent last year.
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ene / Reuters / AFP