Norway’s EV sales are about to skyrocket to new high with Tesla Model 3 arrival

Norway is no stranger to breaking EV adoption records, but it’s about to go to an all new level of electric vehicle sales with the arrival of Tesla Model 3 on the market.

Last year, electric car sales grew by 40% in Norway – 31.2 percent of all passenger car sales were all-electric vehicles and when adding all plug-in vehicles, it increases to 49.1 percent of the market.

That’s already a lot more than any other market in the world, but Norway is expected to push EV sales a lot higher in 2019.

Tesla introducing Model 3 in the market is going to make the biggest difference.

The automaker has already received over 5,000 orders for the Model 3 and that’s just for the two higher-end versions of the vehicle.

In comparison, the American electric automaker delivered 8,623 vehicles in Norway in 2018 – up by 161 units from the previous year.

A few dozen Model 3 vehicles have already been registered in Norway over the past two weeks, but those vehicles are believed to be owned by Tesla as part of their display and test drive fleet.

Customer deliveries are expected to start any day as the first large shipments are starting to arrive in Europe.

Electrek’s Take

I expect that those first 5,000 Model 3 vehicles are scheduled to be delivered in the first quarter, which would indicate that Tesla could more than double its deliveries in Norway and easily push BEV sales to over 50% of the market.

That’s going to be an important milestone because new vehicles with an internal combustion engine are going to be in the minority.

When you add the introduction of the Audi e-tron, Mercedes-Benz EQC, and the ramp-up of the Kona EV, Niro EV, and a few other electric cars, I would bet that all-electric vehicle sales will represent over 70% of new passenger vehicle sales in Norway in 2019.

If you are in Norway right now and you are considering buying a gas-powered car, I would think twice about it because I think your resale value will be bad. Like really bad.

You could apply this thinking to other markets too with varrying degrees based on EV adoption.