What the U.S. can learn from Norway when it comes to EV adoption

When talking to people online, living in Norway feels like being from the future trying to argue with people from the past.

Imagine trying to convince people from 1924 that we’re routinely flying around in building-sized planes. They might have many legitimate concerns. Planes they have heard about might have seemed very unsafe. They may have heard of many crashes of early planes. And imagining that a plane can cross the pacific could be hard. But for us living in the present we wouldn’t think twice about flying half way across the planet because we’re so used to it.

There’s many people who think that widespread adoption of EVs would be a catastrophe. There’d be parking garages burning down every day and the grid would totally collapse.

And here we are with EVs all around us.. and everything is just fine. Better than fine. They catch fire less often than gasoline cars, if a parking garage is burning they don’t add fuel to the fire, the grid is fine, air pollution is coming down.. but some people refuse to believe me when I tell them this.

Hell, even within Norway, I’ve had my older neighbour tell me that EVs don’t last even 5 years. I felt like I should tell him my 8yo EV was working just fine, but figured it was best to not start an argument.

The free tolls would be trouble work in the US since some are sold to foreign companies for multi-decade long leases with up to 99years for many.

Norway is at 82% new vehicle EV adoption and aiming for 100%.

I think more will try the plugin hybrid variants first as it offers 40-50 miles of battery range. If it charges to 80% then you’re at 32-40 miles respectively and most city driving round trip is equal to that or less.

>The Norwegian government started incentivizing the purchase of EVs back in the 1990s with free parking, the use of bus lanes, no tolls and most importantly, no taxes on zero-emission vehicles.