In Norway, we’re living in the future

President Trump has had an “alternating” relationship to electric cars in the first six months of his second precidency. He really do not want to support them in any way and rather the opposite - he wants to support the fossil fuel industry to Make America Great Again. Meanwhile, I just discovered that we now have Petrol stations without Petrol?

Norway (the state) makes a ton of money from fossil fuel extraction - both in Norway and abroad. At the same time, they have been heavily subsidising the sale of electric cars. It's a massive contradiction, but if you think about it - stopping oil extraction while you're still dependant on it for transportation would stop the entire country (or at least bankrupt it since you'd still need to import fuel). Once all cars are electric, it wouldn't stop the country to cut fossil fuels. But how long would that take then? At what rate is Norway actually converting it's current fleet of cars?

How Electric is Norway actually?

Norway has 98% low carbon power - mostly from hydro - so electricity is “clean” from the source. At this point, 95% of all new cars in Norway are fully electric. The remaining 5% are divided between Hybrid and Diesel fuel. Today I have no idea why anyone would buy anything other than an electric car, but humans are creatures of habit. My neighbour is among the 5% and last year he purchased a diesel Mercedes despite living in a very urban area. He is an exception though. We have had significant incentives such as no VAT on EV's, reduced tax on car-tax, no road-toll, ability to drive in the bus lane (removed 2024), free parking, reduced company tax for EVs, free charging and much more.

So what have Norway gained from heavily subsidising EV sales since 2001? The country is well ahead of their goals for CO2 emissions from cars. They've also proven that EVs work well in very cold climate. People have EVs along all of Norway - not just in the cities. Only old EVs have limited range and you wouldn't want to drive 600 km (370 miles) without a break anyway. There are chargers everywhere, though you'd only use them on long trips since everyone charges at home over night for very low cost.

The above stats only account for personal cars though, but through the use of incentives - all new short to medium haul buses, commercial vans and trucks are also going electric now. Commercial electric vans are above 45% adoption this year. Why? With such a high ownership of EVs, the people owning the businesses already knows that there are no significant hurdles. The charging infrastructure is there, the maintenance cost is half (or less), the vehicles have more power and they are significantly cheaper to run. So while the current US president isn't a fan and won't help it, the US people will eventually understand that EVs are just a much better deal than ICE cars.

When looking at new sales (96%) it looks really impressive, but how are the numbers overall? What is the total percentage of electric cars vs all cars in Norway? It's just 29% (scroll down to “Personbilbestanden”). In the Oslo area where I live, it's above 50% and that applies to most urban areas. So it has taken 24 years of incentives to get about one third of the cars to go all electric. Given that literally all new cars are electric, this will only increase. It is however only increasing by 3-4% each year. So if you live in a country that has low EV adoption - that's the rate that cars will likely be swapped out at. It'll eventually also go faster, so I'd guess that we'll have 90% electric in another 24 years? There will always be a few cars that'll be running of fossil fuel, but it'll be more difficult to fuel them in the future!

A non-petrol petrol-station?

In Norway as in many countries, we've always had petrol stations (bensin-stasjon). One can argue that the sale of fuels have become less of an important thing the last few years, and that these should now be called Service-stations since they offer more food & snacks than stuff for your car. A big trend in Norway is now that these stations are removing the old pumps and tanks and instead are installing 400kW chargers. Some will retain a pump for petrol & diesel. Some will just retain a petrol pump. And just recently I saw the petrol station at Marienlyst, Oslo completely ripping out all the fossil infrastructure and replacing it with a huge transformer station and 14 chargers at 400kW!

The Service-station is still there serving hotdogs & snacks. They still have the car-wash. But there is no way you can fill up an ICE car there. The picture at the top is a different angle of this same station. 4 fossil fuel pumps were changed to 12 powerful chargers.

This happens all across Norway now. Formerly the stations added charging points at the back of their lots. They rented this space out to other firms that would then put up their own chargers. Now the stations have started to realise that the price of charging points have gone down so much that they are removing the fossil fuel pumps and replacing them with powerful chargers. An employee told me that maintenance on EV chargers are also cheaper than the mechanical pumping systems, so for anyone modernising a station it just makes sense when more than half your customers want EV charging over traditional fuel. I would still say that the above choice of not having a single pump for fossil fuel, is a bold (but forward-thinking) choice.

How far ahead are we really?

So how far ahead is actually Norway? We're only ahead in terms of adoption, not in terms of technology. China is currently the powerhouse for invention for EVs. They currently have cars that can charge the entire battery in just 5 minutes and you'll likely see Norwegian stations adopting this infrastructure very soon. Tesla was crucial for the early adoption and has a solid brand, but Chinese car makers are taking over. Many countries are ramping up, but it will take quite some time to catch up for other countries. The closest countries are actually our closest neighbours - the Nordic countries. With subsidies, it'll take less time to get there. This can be seen clearly in the below graph from Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA-4.0):

All the Nordic countries have subsidies in various ways and it clearly shows. China has worked methodically to get to this, so they're less reliant on other nations to run their country. This summer I've seen lots of Dutch EVs on the roads, so the excellent charging infrastructure is now also attracting tourists.

BTW: did you know that the band A-HA is part of the reason Norwegian policies on EVs changed?