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Comment by SuperChihuahua | Hacker News Reader

Electric cars in Norway:

- Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric, the same number in US is 0.1 percent.

- The number of electric cars on the Norwegian roads today is 7 000, and the total amount of cars is 2.4 million. The neighboring country Sweden has 4.4 million cars, but only 600 of those are electric.

- About 40 percent of those who own an electric car also own a gasoline car.

- The goal of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association is to have 100 000 electric cars in Norway within year 2020.

- The Norwegians have earlier tried to produce electric cars through the company Think Global. For the fourth time in twenty years, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

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> - Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric

Even better, that number is already outdated - the article states that the Model S has a 5.1% market share already.

It should be noted though that the Norwegians can afford to be environmental - they make ridiculous amounts of money from their offshore oil fields. Also, they have plenty of cheap electricity from hydro.

That is a misnomer. Oil accounts for about 22% of our GDP. Fact is, GDP per capita is only so much higher than that of the US, about 10% I'd say.

We can "afford to be environmental" the same way any country would be able to afford to be. The real difference is our wealth distribution which is leaps and bounds ahead of most of the world, here in Norway a higher percentage of the population are simply able to afford the car and that is what we're seeing in Tesla's market share.

Also, having access to cheap oil/your own oil is probably not the best stimulus for electrical car ownership, so I think there's definitely more going on than that :)

Buying gas in norway is way more expensive that in the US.

Edit: About $9.30 per gallon (using 14.83 nok per liter in dollars per gallon via google)

Only because it is placing heavy taxes on fuel (which I think is a good thing). Compare with other oil-producing nations, which don't do this. Also, the US has really low gas prices.

It's more like twice the US:

GDP per capita 2012 for Norway: $99,557. US: 49,965. (Sweden: $55,244)

The last decade has been exceptional, though part of the reason is the NOK is vastly stronger against the dollar than it used to be (then again part of the reason for that is that the Norwegian economy is as strong as it is)

(EDIT: that's World Bank numbers, btw. IMF and other sources give slightly different results, but the relative difference is pretty much the same; if you factor in purchasing power parity, the gap is substantially closer, though)

22% of GDP is enormous. The U.S. is one of the largest oil producers in the world, and oil & gas together is 2.5% of GDP: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/23/t....

That said, Norway is very smart. They correctly perceive that GDP from oil production isn't really income, but rather simply liquidation of assets. They know they can't afford to spend that money, so they save it (effectively turning it from one kind of asset into another).

Having access to your own oil is probably not going to boost electric car popularity in general (quite the contrary). I think "they have oil, so they are rich, so they can buy expensive electrical cars" is a bit of a shortcut.

Norway has the most expensive price per gallon of oil despite producing it: http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2012-08-13/highest-cheape... (data from 2012)

Only because it is placing heavy taxes on fuel (which I think is a good thing). Compare with other oil-producing nations, which don't do this.

My point was that the fact that Norway produces oil doesn't trivially lead to more people buying electrical cars.

I concur. The country is pushing in the right direction to incentivize alternative energy consumption and its a fantastic opportunity to try and get a head start on establishing better infrastructure. I'm surprised Tesla hasn't invested more in a nordic supercharger network yet.

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