EVs at 93.9% Share in Norway – Record High | Hacker News Reader

EVs at 93.9% Share in Norway – Record High

cleantechnica.com

31 pointsthelastgallon22 comments

Fraction of new registrations in January; as a fraction of the fleet it was 25% in 2022 [1]. (It’s about 1% in America [2].)

I’m curious to see at what point the cost of operating an ICE vehicle accelerates upwards, as the economies of scale which support fuelling and maintaining them fails.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in...

[2] https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/percentage-of-...

Fascinating considering most ev incentives were cancelled. Even more fascinating that they started improving bike&pub transport infra too

Fascinating considering most ev incentives were cancelled

2nd sentence of TFA: “All non-BEV powertrains faced higher taxes from January 1st”

(Granted, you did say “most…incentives”.)

It probably helps that Norway has 79% homeowners which should make the street parking problem less acute.

Impressive, but also the country has fewer people than NYC.

Norway is basically a test case. They're a rich country that can afford to subsidize BEVs and penalize ICE, so they're deploying first. This gives the rest of the world a demonstration that large-scale nationwide vehicle electrification is completely feasible, even in a harsh climate. (It's not a perfect test case, because there are some differences that make EVs a little easier in Norway and also a little more challenging, such as the cold weather.) It's good to have a test case, since improving BEV economics are going to eventually make them dominant almost everywhere.

Most new car buyers in Europe are already paying more than the cost of a BYD Dolphin. It’s really not about subsidy anymore.

Taxing ICE cars is something many countries can just go ahead and do without very many negative consequences if you ask me.

There is no penalizing ICE. Fossil fuels subsidies are $7 trillion/year: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022

If fossil fuels are not subsidized, 100% of car sales will be EVs.

I don't understand the downvotes.

Does that make the achievement easier?

Uh yeah? Lots of stuff is fundamentally easier with only 5 million people, especially if the population is highly urbanized like Norway.

For one thing, roughly speaking around 15 million EVs are produced a year right now.

So ignoring politics, economics, administration and operating purely on the basis of what's physically possible, each Norwegian could have 3 electric cars this year if we sent all EV production capacity to them.

Meanwhile Germany has around 80 million people, France and UK around 70m each, Italy around 60m, and Poland around 40m. So for any of these culturally, politically, and economically similar countries, even in the hypothetical scenario here where we direct all of the global production of EVs to one country it would take multiple years for every person to get just one.

Ok, now consider that Russia, Japan, and Mexico each have well over 100 million people. Pakistan and Brazil have over 200m, the USA over 300m, China and India are both over 1.4 billion.

So yeah, I'd say it's definitely much easier to hit national percentage targets when you're working with 5 million people...

EVs reached 33% of sales in China, 35% in Germany: https://apnews.com/article/automakers-electric-vehicles-us-c...

That's fine in Norway where it never gets cold, but in countries where it snows EV can't work because of the battery life /s

Technically Norway should be much colder on level of Canada cold. They aren't because Gulf stream. Same for UK, which usually does not even have winter like Southern Europe, just endless autumn.

Interestingly, per another article I read on HN a couple weeks ago, it may not be due to the gulf stream: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-source-of-euro...

Sorry, are you from the UK? Which part of southern Europe are you referring to? I can appreciate that the UK is milder than it should be, but it definitely gets winter compared to southern Europe, particularly the darkness. It even snowed here a couple of weeks ago. Melbourne, Australia would be a good example of your “6 months of autumn” idea.

I am from central Europe, lived in UK for 4 years and moved to southern Europe. I can say that in UK there is no real winter. Just autumn. Same like southern Europe. Only difference is less fog.

Most of the population is in the south and it really isn't that cold

My hometown in central/eastern France has about the same climate as Oslo, northern cities on the coast have even warmer climates in winter

Oslo doesn’t really get that cold in winter and other coastal cities further out west even less so. e.g. the avg. low temperature in Bergen is 0 degrees in Jan and Feb.

Norway is the wise drug (oil) dealer that refused to get high on its own supply...kudos I guess

The less you use the more you can sell.

Nonsense, there is clear evidence that EVs are just a fading fad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39150849 /s

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