Electric cars are becoming increasingly popular as the demand for alternative energy rises. While European sales are stagnant, Norway set record electric car sales.

Electric Demand

Norway sets world record electric vehicle sales.

Statistics show that Norway set a world record by recording 94% of the share market in August. According to the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV), the Tesla Model Y accounted for 18.8% of the sales. The OFV said electric vehicles made up 94.3% of new car registrations. In August, Norwegians bought 10,480 EVs, which makes it 68,435 since the new year.

It’s a different story in other European places, mostly because of high costs and a lack of proper infrastructure for electric vehicles. While the sales of electric vehicles took a hit, the sales of hybrid vehicles increased. Hybrids combine traditional fossil fuel engines with electric batteries. Norway is a major oil and gas producer, but the Scandinavian country also aims to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2025, 10 years ahead of the European Union’s goal.

One big reason Norway smashed the world record is the incentives offered to its citizens regarding electric vehicles. The country has generous tax benefits that make EVs “competitively priced.” According to the website Visit Norway, the country also offers “cheaper parking, tolls and ferry tickets, and the right to use the bus and taxi lanes on many roads.”

“No country in the world comes close to Norway in the electric car race,” OFV director Oyvind Solberg Thorsen said in a statement. “If this trend continues, we will soon be on our way to achieving our goal of 100% zero-emission cars by 2025,” he said.

Let’s compare the sales reported by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. In July, electric vehicles accounted for 12.1% of new car sales in the EU. The EVs fell behind petrol vehicles, accounting for 33.4% of new car sales. Hybrids fell just shy of petrol cars, which accounted for 32%, and diesel accounted for 12.6%.