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Comment by don_esteban | Hacker News Reader

Norway is not damn cold. It sits next to a warm, Gulf-stream ocean. Rarely gets much (<-10 Celsius) below freezing.

Finland, that's another thing.

Around 38% of new cars sales in Finland in 2025 were EVs [1], so they apparently have figured out how to make them work. PHEVs were another 20%. Gas cars were around 39%, and diesel cars were about 4%.

[1] https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/general-i...

EVs work in cold weather, just the range is reduced.

If it is a second car in the family, used for short range commuting ... or if your lifestyle does not involve frequent long-distance trips, EV is perfectly suitable even in Finland.

In those countries most people own a house so they can plug in every night.

Where I live it's all apartments (without parking because they were built before cars existed) and there's maybe one charging station on the street per 300 spaces or so. A few more in parking garages but you pay hundreds a month to access those.

I don't think an EV will work here until every space has a charger.

Sounds like you might live in a sensible place where you probably don’t need a car at all. That’s the ideal! Unfortunately, much of, e.g., the U.S. (outside of ~4 cities), “cities” are built around individual car ownership. There, where a car is pretty much necessary, and you likely already have a dedicated spot to store it, it often makes sense to choose an EV version.

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