How Norway Built an EV Utopia While the US Is Struggling to Go Electric | Hacker News Reader

How Norway Built an EV Utopia While the US Is Struggling to Go Electric

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21 pointsoutrun8676 comments

1. Have a large amount of oil & gas comparatively to your population

2. Sell the oil and gas to Europe

3. Use the money to finance the Utopia

I don't want to be too cynical, what Norway is doing is great, but I feel like whenever a case study comes up about why something works, ultimately it boils down to "money".

We can go full reductio ad absurdum and write "How Norway Built a free healthcare Utopia While Ethiopia is struggling".

It has to be mentioned that Norway spends most of it's petromoney on the Pension Fund. We've got a rule that the government at most can touch 4% of that for whatever they want to do - but they keep it around 2-3% .

Even then it should be compared to a city in the US as they would sometimes not even be a top 10 by metroplex population

Sure, if that city stretched further than the distance from Minneapolis to Houston!

We're not exactly a densely population country. We've got enormous distances. A city would be rather easy, wouldn't it? Just pop up some big charging stations around the city in addition to home charging, and that wouldn't be a problem any more.

Remember that the population density of Norway is 1/5 of the population density of the US.

Surely you can think of all the reasons a sparse population is easier to maintain. Also you'd only be our 4th largest state so I wouldn't call this "enormous"

So how much do people of Norway have to save up from their income for their pension?

4. 95% of electricity is from hydropower

Just to be clear, 95% of electricity in Norway is from hydro. Not 4.95%

That's by far the biggest consideration, most likely. Having a ton of hydro is a godsend: you have extreme amounts of energy, but it's hard to export so you can't really hit the resource curse. It can still be a bit of a factor (because high-electricity business e.g. aluminium smelters) but nowhere near as bad as oil/gas.

Also things these silly America sucks conparisons convenientlh forget:

1.The US is a republic of mini countries or states.

2. Norway is roughly the size of new england.

3. Norway has 5.4 million people vs America's 330 or 340 million

One negative thing to point out is that Norway’s policies on the EV are increasing the number of cars on the road (this is stated in the video). People are opting to drive more often than they did before to places that they otherwise would have taking public transit.

It makes me wonder if reducing the guilt around car usage has an effect of increasing its usage. People may think of EV car usage as nearly zero cost (hidden in your electric bill), and zero impact on the environment (ignoring the other pollutants that EV cars have, mainly microplastics from tires). It’s an interesting side effect of Norway’s policies.

I'm of the unpopular opinion that buses should be closed and ride sharing should fill the gap to connect people to light/heavy rail.

Do you have a source for that claim? Norwegian statistics does not agree with you here:

https://www.ssb.no/transport-og-reiseliv/landtransport/stati...

https://www.dagsavisen.no/nyheter/2023/06/30/gjennomsnittlig....

Cars seem to be driven less, per person, not more.

Population is increasing. So maybe there are more cars on the road in total? But that’s a a nearly irrelevant measure in this discussion.

It also goes directly against my personal experience, and the policies in the big cities makes it nearly impossible to drive more.

Our companies moved to a new office, and that office was built without any attached parking. I don’t think you’re allowed to build new building with lots of parking in the city centre anymore. We have some parking spots in a nearby parking garage but it’s a 5min walk away. Meanwhile there’s a brand new huge bike garage in the new building. With bike repair and bike washing equipment. I didn’t use to bike to work, it’s a bit on the long side at 30min each way. But I have started doing it after I got an E-bike. Many coworkers do the same. Young coworkers seem to delay buying their first car longer than I did. Many even bike in winter (I’m not there yet)

Traffic on the highway is also not getting worse. It’s actually been fairly smooth ever since the pandemic. I suspect an increase in home office has helped, along with the gradual shift towards more biking and public transportation.

It’s stated in the video, I didn’t look up the data. Which means the video is wrong.

Do buses have no microplastic pollution? How about road damage they cause?

Be a rich country, have a 25% tax on cars, discount that to 0% for the first ~$50,000 of EVs, be small so electric infrastructure is easy. Have good public transit so if you’re poor you don’t need a car.

Norway is not small (distance-wise). But we do have electricity production pretty well spread out as we're a mountainous country with plenty of hydropower throughout the entire country.

The last line is probably only true for oslo. Its a big country with a low population density so I expect most poor rural areas don’t have much to offer. That being said if you are poor you aren’t buying new cars anyhow.

Electric infrastructure is not easy in Norway. You know it’s very mountainous.. right?

But Norway does have the benefit that it has relied on electricity for much of its heating for a long time. So the added load of EVs is not huge relatively speaking.

Though the surprising thing is just how easy it has been. There’s no reason to think it’d be insurmountable for other countries. We have the same rules of physics here.

It was actually much better than that. The 25% is just the VAT. In addition there is a tax on new cars (fossil and hybrid) with elements for weight, emissions, and before 2017 also power. EVs were initially excempt all taxes, meaning you pretty much get more than twice as much car when chosing an EV. Combine that with no charge for EVs on toll roads (which are abundant here), rather expensive fossil fuels and cheap electricity, and you get a lot of EVs on the road. Great for the local environment, maybe not so great for the climate.

It’s because of Bjorn Nyland. He evangelized EVs in Norway and ten years later here we are. What a difference a decade makes, just like what smartphones did to Nokia.

In Norway electricity is ridiculously cheap.

This used to be true until we joined ACER and built a couple more electric cables. It hasn't been true since about 2021.

Please don’t repeat the misconception that ACER has anything to do with electricity prices. Norway built plenty of cables before ACER and would have built the exact same cables without it. It’s a complete myth that ACER has anything to do with Norway building more interconnect cables. It has been an explicit energy policy of Norway to be well connected to neighbours because Norway relies on hydro power. And hydro power is unpredictable. There are dry years.

Average prices are still pretty damn low. Some periods of high electricity prices during an energy crisis and dry year does not mean Norway has expensive electricity in general.

there’s 5.5 million people in the whole of norway. what are we talking about?

What's your point? We've got a lower population density than the US.

it’s tiny. it’s like comparing a village of hundreds to a metropolis like tokyo/nyc/london.

totally different problems/solutions. there is no equivalence, there is almost nothing in common between the two.

norway should be compared to it’s geo and cultural neighbours, sweden and finland.

Sure, if you’ve got 10x the population you’ve got maybe ~10x the area and 10x more stuff to build. But you’ve also got ~10x the amount of capital and 10x the amount of labour.

So how is this a valid argument?

Maybe this is an excuse for some areas with extreme high population density… something Norway certainly doesn’t have. But then those cities (say New York) generally have public transportation to take some of the load off.

It’s not an excuse for, say Portland or Seattle, that looks very similar to the Oslo metropolitan area. And you can just repeat that argument for every medium density 1-5 million population metropolitan area in USA.

i made the point further down below. shall we compare nyc to a village in italy? we can, but there is literally nothing in common, everything is completely different.

you can compare norway to sweden and finland. or the US to canada.

I guess having your whole economy pretty wealthy based on fossil fuels and relying on US innovation in developing EV infrastructure helps.

This kind of reminds me of those “I’m debt free and have $500k savings at 25” type posts where the secret is having rich parents who pay for your college, network you into a good job, live at home and pay all expenses so 100% of salary goes into savings.

I mean, it’s cool for the poster, but I’m not sure how any of that is generalizable to me. Or to countries other than Norway. I don’t see Liberia or Oman (similar populations) drawing too many useful ideas from Norway.

I agree with you, but it does show that having a competent government can make amazing things possible, and having a dysfunctional one with massive corruption makes it impossible. Not Liberia or Oman, but Nigeria, Angola, and Uganda have the resources to do something similar.

Just because the US isn’t #1 at something doesn’t mean it’s “news”.

Every time Norway comes up as an example… there are 5.5m people in Norway vs 334m in the USA.

Can you explain the logic behind this attempt at an excuse?

Sure. Norway sits at massine natgas and oil reserves. Hundreds of billions in savings, small population, small area with most of the population around a coast make it easy to transition fast.

Ah, so not just small population.

Normally I go about „there are almost as many people living in metro Berlin than in Norway”. 5.2m vs 5.5m.

Small population with tons of free money to subsidise the transition to ev.

> Norway Number of Registered Vehicles was reported at 5,410,000 Unit in Dec 2022.

with 110k to 190k new cars registered annually sounds doable, no?

This isn’t really explaining the logic behind your original statement. You said “there are 5.5m people in Norway vs 334m in the USA.” Why does the population difference matter so much? As a counterexample, California has over 40 million people and has the highest EV adoption of any US state.

For one thing they wouldn't be able to produce 90-100+% of the electricity they need from just from hydro if the population was much higher.

Also low population coupled with a lot of revenue from oil/gas means that EVs are much more affordable (or rather ICE cars were very expensive due to taxes, so EVs still seemed like a great deal to many Norwegians despite being very expensive).

It would in principle be more efficient to burn oil/gas in a power plant and use some of it to fuel EVs. The CO2 emissions would also be lower. So this isn’t an excuse either. The energy is there, the political willpower is not.

EVs are now more or less cheaper in total costs of ownership now, so with some political will the transition could have been faster without hurting the wallet in the long term. Some special car loan policies might have been needed though.

There simply are no excuses. With a big political push this transition could have been kickstarted with the GM EV1. Some extra research grants and some political pressure on cheap licensing terms for LFP batteries could have helped get batteries to where they need to be.

But there’s also no use thinking about the world that could’ve been. There are many reasons why USA isn’t where Norway is.

The point that stands is that Norway has shown that it can be done, and that should inform USA and others in how they move forward.

Most of the excuses made now don’t make sense. Norway isn’t an ideal country for EVs. Winter is brutal on range. Most American live in warmer climates. Norwegians also love to drive to far away mountain cabins in winter. My Norwegian relatives do more road trips than my family in the US.

Some excuses have some truth to them. Norway does have cheap electricity. But USA has resources Norway don’t. All in all the excuses don’t add up to anything that can justify inaction going forward.

>It would in principle be more efficient to burn oil/gas in a power plant and use some of it to fuel EVs

Not coal though. Wouldn't it better to primarily focus on closing every single coal plant first? (also I would assume the same is the case for the type of 'oil' burnt in power plants, only gas is relatively "clean". Then you also have all kinds of other pollution that's much more harmful directly than CO2)

> All in all the excuses

Norway was very well positioned to shift to EV because of the very high taxes on new cars there, they just had to cut taxes to do that. Doing the equivalent (i.e. 50-75% tax on ICE cars) in the US or most other countries is simply politically infeasible. I know moralizing can be fun but it doesn't really offer real practical solutions.

> EVs are now more or less cheaper in total costs of ownership now

That really depends on the state (of course higher taxes on petrol would help but again, politically infeasible)

> This isn’t really explaining the logic behind your original statement.

Hence I clarified.

The average U.S. state is roughly the size of Norway.

So if you prefer, the question could be why not a single American state is anywhere near Norway in the EV transition.

No clue. You guys like big things? Cybertruck and Hummer ev come to mind.

Are you talking about size? Because if you are, that’s not really accurate. Norway might not be huge when you compare it to an entire continent, but it’s definitely not small. Plus, it’s got way more geographical challenges than your average US state.

I meant population primarily.

Norway is roughly the size of Montana with the population of Minnesota.

Three questions: 1) is the population of Montana scattered anywhere close to what is it like in Norway? 2) Is there abundant hydro power in Montana, like in Norway? 3) do people in Montana pay maximum income tax of 17% and not having to save for their pension because Montana has a $1.5 trillion pension fund?

Are these three the precise combination of factors that must be present for EVs to break through? Would be interesting to see the research on that.

American states are pretty different. Many have scattered populations. Some have abundant hydro power. There’s even a state with a permanent fund for oil income:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

The Alaska fund is smaller than the Norwegian one, but it pays out an annual income to all residents, so it’s not really comparable either. I suspect the Alaska fund may have been one inspiration for the Norwegian model.

One thing to point out is that different areas of the US are doing better and worse on a lot of things. This is a good example. It would be better to look at the different metropolises of the US when talking about various things like ev adoption, bike usage, etc. We have many areas of the US that have similar density to that of Norway.

Even then its hard to compare to europe because US metros are so much larger in population and size. Oslo has a smaller population than Columbus, Ohio which isn’t even a large or very significant city. It ends up being an apples to oranges comparison unless you subset an area of the US that has a similar population density and demography as a similarly sized area in Europe, and no one does that because that means splitting metros into weird pieces that people find harder to think about than “city x vs city y.”

The reason I think Metros is more important than either city v city, or State v State, is that many metros can cross state lines, and may include multiple cities.

The Bay Area is a good example of the latter with Oakland and San Francisco being in the same metro area. It’s the metro where things like public transit become valuable options, or charging infrastructure for commutes is important, etc.

You can definitely find a similar metropolitan areas to Oslo in the US. I find Portland to be quite similar.

So why don’t they have a similar adoption rate? I don’t see how the “but USA is bigger” means that ALL of USA is completely off the hook.

Yes. You've got Nebraska, Idaho, Nevada and Kansas! THey all have a lower population density than Norway! Therefore the other states don't need to bother..

EDIT: Ugh, thinking, typing and using a search engine. The above is wrong. They all have a higher population density than Norway. The following states have a lower population density:

Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota

The argument stands, but the list of states was wrong. ;)

The size of the USA is a better argument. Infrastructure needs to spread to cover the populated areas which are huge.

Population density of the US is ~5 times higher than in Norway. The distance between Lindesnes and Nordkapp is greater than the distance between Minneapolis and Houston.

Yes, but the population density of the US is ~5 times greater than Norway, so this isn't really an argument.

Doesen't that just reinforce their point? Small population and large area (with a lot of mountains) allows them to generate most of their electricity supply from cheap/clean hydro.

Also they have very high revenue per person from oil sales.

The revenues from the oil sales goes into the pension fund. Not really applicable.

You still have all the people and companies working in the industry paying taxes. And some of the oil revenue still ends up in the government budget directly:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/744826/budget-revenue-of...

How is that not applicable when one doesn’t need to save for their pension?

To be fair taxes in Norway are not at all low.

https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/rates/bracket-tax/

Maximum is 17.6%. I pay 42% in Germany. I happily take those Norwegian „high taxes”.

No it isn't (an average Norwegian pays close to 40%). There is basically no difference between taxes paid by employee or employer (besides the lack of transparency built into the tax system) all of is is still coming from the same pot. Denmark is pretty much the only country in Europe that isn't purposefully trying to trick their taxpayers...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

Care to point to some income tax calculator for Norway? Because the internet says different things: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/norway/individual/taxes-on-pers....

I'm not talking about income tax but the entire tax burden. Look at the wikipedia article I linked:

"46.4% (53.0% including 14.1% social security contribution by employer. All taxes include 8.2% pension fund payments)"

Also indirect taxes like VAT are higher than in Germany.

No, the general income tax is 22%. You add the higher tax bracket to that. Then it's the social insurance on top.

Totally. The entire country would be a midsize state in the US.

Thinking about it I’m not totally sure so I looked up Norway’s size and population density, which seems to most closely match Kansas (37/mi^2 vs 35.9 for KS) and the land area of KS is a bit less than half, so it seems two kansases is a decent approximation for Norway, ignoring the coast/shape, just for a sense of scale. Of course Norway has a 1.5T fund and maybe they spend more? Figuring the per capita budget for both they are pretty close, so apart from cultural and topographical differences this seems like a pretty close fit.

Except you should look at the shape of the country. And the fact that we don't spend much out of that fund.

Hint. Minneapolis to Houston is a shorter distance than Lindesnes to Nordkapp

Yeah, that’s what I meant by topographical differences, and my numbers for spending came from actual spending, as disbursed from the fund.

I’m just looking for a better yardstick, and I have experienced Kansas firsthand. Lots of comments about the relative sizes of countries and I was curious what some of the basic numbers looked like.

Be a physically small country and have your entire (EV using) population arranged along the coasts using the same few roads and infrastructure (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Norway_p...).

It occurs to me that you have no clue when it comes to distances in Norway.

Minneapolis to Houston is a 1176 miles drive. Lindesnes to Nordkapp is a 1305 miles drive.

While Norway is a very long country, the actual areas amenable to settlement and population density are relatively small. Population is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few metro areas in the southern third of the country, and the long northern section is much more sparsely populated.

And yet, even our more populous cities are less densely populated than several US states.

Oslo to Bergen or Stavanger is still 400-600 km through very mountainous terrain.

1.5 million live in the Oslo metro which is a significant proportion but you're not right at all as far as the rest of the population is concerned.

North to south in Norway = Norway to Italy

> physically small country

That's not exactly true at all relative to population. Sure most of the north is very sparsely inhabited so not that relevant but even the southern coast is not at all dense (compare it with the East and West coasts in the US).

And then you have the fjords and mountains which further increase the distances and make infrastructure a lot more expensive.

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