Forty-five per cent of cars sold in Norway last month were electric: report

No gas balloons needed. Image of taxi driver and cab taken in Trondheim, Norway in 1917.

In September Norwegians swung strongly for electric vehicles and gave zero-emission vehicles a 45% market share, says Advisory Council of Veitrafikken AS (in Norwegian).

There were 4,810 passenger plug-in cars registered in Norway last month, up 25% from a year ago. With more electric vehicles sold, average CO2 emissions per vehicle declined to 55 g/km, a 21% drop from a year ago.

Consumers appear to trust all-electric vehicles. Hybrid car sales declined 34% from a year ago and only sold 2,779 units.

Major car manufacturers are all rushing into the electric vehicle space. Mercedes Benz invested $12 billion in the space, says Bloomberg, and will be introducing luxury plug-in SUVs and passenger cars.

Norway matches broader trends in the auto industry. New car sales are swinging to electric, reports Bloomberg.

Looking at four major markets — China, Europe, Japan and North America — vehicle sales in the 12 months ending in June increased by about 1.15 million units, year over year. Of that, about 565,000 were electric vehicles. In other words, almost half the growth in the overall car market was taken by the plug-ins.

That surge in the share of growth is, in part, a cyclical phenomenon. Growth in vehicle sales for these four markets was running at about 3 to 4 million a year in 2015 and 2016, but that slowed dramatically to an annual run rate of about 1.2 million since the start of 2017.

Creative commons image of taxi driver and his cab courtesy of Municipal Archives of Trondheim. The “ballon” on the roof is a container for gas, which was used instead of petrol during WWI and a couple of years later. Cabdriver is car owner Isak Garmo.

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