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Norway EV sales and related data

New vehicle sales

These data have been collated from data from Statens vegvesen (SVV) hosted by Digitaliseringsdirektoratet and from ofv.no.

Monthly data on breakdown of engine types of new and used vehicle registrations in Norway from 1990: CSV data file

For data on other countries, see my Collected vehicle registration data page.

Deliveries to Norway of Teslas occur every third month, leading to very spikey sales statistics. Smoothing over three months gives a clearer picture of the trend.

Electric vehicle incentives in Norway

Distance travelled (Source: SSB)

It's one thing to have a high fraction of EVs in sales of new cars, but how much are those cars displacing travel in cars with internal combustion engines? Distance travelled statistics go some way to answering that question. Note, for example, that the average EV is driven further each year than the average car with an internal combustion engine.

Road transport's energy consumption

While the car fleet's emissions change gradually as the fleet becomes more electric, changes in the share of biofuel in the market can have more immediate effects.

In many countries biofuels are subsidised to make them more competitive with fossil fuels. In Norway this takes the form of exemption from the CO2 tax that fossil fuels face as well as a requirement that biofuels meet a specific share of fuels sold for road transport.

Note that here 'biofuels' refers to liquid bioenergy used as transport fuel (e.g. biodiesel), while 'bioenergy' includes all energy carriers from (recent) biological sources. Palm oil residues were reclassified from 'waste' to 'byproduct' from 1 January 2017, and diesel made directly from palm oil was effectively banned from 1 January 2020.

Selected reports and studies

Motor vehicle demographics (2022)

Lasse Fridstrøm, TØI Report 1888/2022 (in Norwegian)

Demographic concepts and methods may help understand the dynamics of the motor vehicle population, or its inertia. Relying on a stock-flow cohort model of the Norwegian vehicle fleet, we generate, for seven different vehicle categories, age pyramids, survival curves, and life expectancy estimates, along with algorithms predicting vehicle stocks, aggregate annual mileage, energy consumption, emissions to air, and end-of-life scrapping. Distinguishing among eleven different powertrains, the model may serve as a decision support tool for long term energy and climate policy formulation.

Slow, fast or extra fast: Exploring decarbonization pathways for road transportation in Norway (2021)

Lasse Fridstrøm and Vegard Østli, TØI Report 1846/2021 (in Norwegian)

Relying on a stock-flow projection model of the Norwegian motor vehicle fleet, we explore certain pathways for decarbonization of domestic road transportation. In our most optimistic scenario, CO2 emissions on the road will come down by 36 percent between 2005 and 2030, before taking account of biofuel use. To achieve a 50 per cent reduction, a biofuel blend-in of 27 percent in 2030 will suffice. The most pessimistic scenario suggests a mere 20 percent emissions cut between 2005 and 2030. In this case, to halve emissions, the biofuel blend-in would have to increase to 47 percent in 2030. A most important incentive is the exemption from value added tax (VAT) for battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Reintroducing VAT on BEVs will reduce their sales by an estimated 30 to 40 percent in 2030.

Who goes electric? Characteristics of electric car ownership in Norway 2011-2017 (2020)

Elisabeth Fevang et al., TØI Report 1780/2020 (in English)

This report characterizes owners of electric vehicles and other passenger cars in Norway based on data from matched administrative registers containing persons and households covering the period 2011-2017. This is the first time such data has been used in a research project on electric vehicles and policies to stimulate purchase and ownership of electric vehicles. We find that electric vehicle owners are more likely to be families with children, live in central areas and have high income and higher education compared to other car owners. Those who face road tolls on their commute to work are also more likely to have an electric vehicle. Over time, owners of electric vehicles have become more similar to other vehicle owners. Those who buy an electric vehicle are more likely than other car buyers to keep their old car, but also this difference has decreased over time.

Reforming Motor Vehicle Taxation in Norway (2019)

Lasse Fridstrøm, TØI Report 1708/2019 (in Norwegian)

The unprecedented speed at which Norwegian automobile buyers have embraced battery electric technology has taken observers, policy makers, stakeholders and even protagonists by surprise. Vehicle electrification in Norway is brought about, not by generous subsidization, but by charging stiff taxes on conventional cars. Zero emission passenger cars are wholly exempt of registration tax, annual ownership tax, fuel tax and even value added tax. They are partly exempt of road toll, ferry fares, parking fees and income tax on private use of company cars. As businesses and consumers respond to these fiscal incentives, the tax revenue dwindles, and the market correction effect of fuel tax is more or less obliterated. To curb the negative external effects of tomorrow’s rising road use demand, a brand new vehicle taxation system is needed. A satellite based system of marginal cost road pricing would do the trick, improving on the present motor vehicle taxation system on at least nine different accounts.

Links to data

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