Electric vehicle sales achieve new record in Norway with 45% of new cars being all-electric and 60% plug-in

The new car sales numbers for September from Norway are in and the country, which is already known for spearheading electrification, is reaching new levels of electric domination and low emission average.

10,620 new passenger cars were registered in Norway last month. About 45% of them were all-electric vehicles and the number goes up to 60% when including plug-in hybrids, according to official registration data.

It’s a new record for the country.

Average CO2 emissions of new cars registered are now at a record low of 55g per km, which is an impressive 16g per km lower than in September 2017.

Øyvind Solberg Thorsen, director of the Road Traffic Advisory Board, commented:

“Such a large increase in electric cars caused a record low CO2 emissions of 55g/km. Although we in Norway are accustomed to average CO2 emissions falling from month to month, this is the lowest level we have ever measured.”

Unsurprisingly, diesel car sales are down, but all-electric vehicles sales also appear to be getting market shares from plug-in hybrids.

Tesla contributed massively to all-electric vehicle deployment in the country last month with just over 2,000 new registrations.

As we previously reported, Tesla tried to stabilize its monthly deliveries in the country after some significant issues.

It appeared to be successful at doing so during the second quarter, but they went back to their old habit of pushing deliveries into the last month of the quarter for Q3.

Tesla delivered about 2,300 cars in the country during the third quarter and over 2,000 of them were delivered in the last month.

Update: This article previously didn’t represent the hybrid/PHEV split properly.

Electrek’s Take

We are kind of getting used to Norway breaking new records for electric vehicle adoption, but it is still quite impressive.

It would be overlooking a massive success to just say that it such a small market that it doesn’t matter much.

Forget countries or even states, no city has managed this kind of EV adoption. It’s truly unprecedented.

Mostly because they are doing it with limited options on the market. They get more EV options than your average market, but it is still somewhat limited.

Can you imagine what will happen when the Model 3 is available? When the Audi e-tron is available? And all those other all-electric vehicles coming to market in the next 2-3 years?

Norway aims for all new cars to be all-electric by 2025. I think they will hit that goal easily. The last few percentage points are going to be hard, but I see them getting to ~90% by 2020.