Historical Milestone: There Are Now More Electric Cars Than Gasoline Cars in Norway
Who would have thought this 20 years ago?
Now, electric cars are officially more popular than the old gasoline cars.
An important milestone in the green transition was reached this month. There are now more registered electric cars than gasoline cars in the total vehicle fleet in Norway.
“There is no other country in the world that has achieved this,”
says Christina Bu from the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, who is very pleased.
In Norway, there are 2.8 million passenger cars, and the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) announced in a press release last week that 754,303 of these are electric cars.
This constitutes 26.26 percent of the car fleet, and electric cars have just surpassed the 753,905 gasoline cars, which now make up 26.24 percent of the total.
But despite the historically high number of electric cars in Norway, one should be aware of the following:
The categorization from OFV involves some playing with numbers. OFV does not include non-rechargeable hybrids in the gasoline car statistics when comparing them with electric cars, even though these cars clearly run on gasoline. Plug-in hybrids with gasoline engines are also not included.
Milestone
“This is historic. A milestone few saw coming ten years ago. The electrification of the passenger car fleet is progressing at a high pace, and Norway is moving rapidly towards becoming the first country in the world with a passenger car fleet dominated by electric cars,” says Øyvind Solberg Thorsen, director of OFV.
He points to the percentage of new car sales—which so far in September stands at 96.7 percent—as the main reason for last week’s announcement.
Celebrating the 2025 EV-only goal
One of the main topics at next year’s Nordic EV Summit, taking place from April 9-10 2025, will be celebrating the 2025 goal for EV-only adoption.
