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Almost a Third of New Cars Sold In Norway Last Year Were Pure Electric (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Almost a third of new cars sold in Norway last year were pure electric, a new world record as the country strives to end sales of fossil-fueled vehicles by 2025. In a bid to cut carbon emissions and air pollution, Norway exempts battery-driven cars from most taxes and offers benefits such as free parking and charging points to hasten a shift from diesel and petrol engines. The independent Norwegian Road Federation (NRF) said on Wednesday that electric cars rose to 31.2 percent of all sales last year, from 20.8 percent in 2017 and just 5.5 percent in 2013, while sales of petrol and diesel cars plunged. The sales figures consolidate Norway's global lead in electric car sales per capita, part of an attempt by Western Europe's biggest producer of oil and gas to transform to a greener economy. For comparison, electric cars had a 2.2 percent share in China in 2017 and 1.2 percent in the United States, according to IEA data.
part of an attempt by Western Europe's biggest producer of oil and gas
The best drug dealers know never to use the stuff they sell. :-)
That said, the fact that so many people in Norway can go electric shows the cars are pretty much viable anywhere in large numbers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The reason is tax-breaks, no tolls, free parking, no import/purchase tax, no road tax, driving in bus lanes. Saving the environment isn't one of those reasons. The fastest selling EV there is the Jaguar iPace. Clearly it is rich people taking advantage of a government program to make their lives easier while commuting.
The regular folks don't see any of that money and until recently, the government wasn't even spending any of it. The vast majority of what they take in for any given year ends up getting banked away into an investment fund (earning even more money) and as a result they've got a considerable nest egg.
The reason for this is that Norway has all kinds of taxes, fees, etc. related to cars, almost all of which have been waved or heavily reduced for electric vehicles. It isn't that it's rich people who can afford shiny new electric cars are suddenly buying them, it's that Norway has made cars hideously expensive for most people, but have removed those expenses if you buy an electric car. I don't know if they changed it at all, but previously they had no VAT on electric vehicles among other more environmentally friendly cars. That's a huge deal.
The lesson is that if you don't tax the ever living hell out of something, people are more likely to buy that thing than the competing alternatives.
So either they force all landlords/etc in the country to install at least one charging point per apartment/tenant or they have to drop their 100% target.
#DeleteFacebook
Norway generates about 90% of it's electrical power via Hydro.
Irrelevant as people people generally do not think (or care) about where power comes from.
That, and the fact the country could fit into Texas twice
That's a really limited view of how people in Europe live. Sure they country they live in may be tiny, but that just means you can drive to a lot more countries. Don't you think that a lot of people in Norway drive to at least Sweden and Denmark?
Also, Norway is a lot bigger than you think.
you have the perfect place for electric cars.
Certainly not in terms of climate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yep, huge government subsidies is the reason.
All in the name of greenwashing of course.
After all, they are the 3rd largest exporter of natural gas in the world - or perhaps they think that is being used to make magical pixie rainbows?
will do that.
The gov is making people have to consider electric by making other transport more expensive.
Making people change their car buying habits by imposing a new tax rate.
Electric becomes the only way to buy a new car for a large number of working people.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The regular folks don't see any of that money and until recently, the government wasn't even spending any of it. The vast majority of what they take in for any given year ends up getting banked away into an investment fund (earning even more money) and as a result they've got a considerable nest egg.
That's very much not true, up until recently the oil income was greater than the deficit meaning we were both saving compound interest and adding fresh money but without any oil income we'd have a big deficit. Last year we had 183 bNOK in net oil income, 214 bNOK in return on our oil fund and had a 255 bNOK deficit without the oil. So the result is our fund grew by 140 bNOK, but almost 20% of our 1253 bNOK budget came from oil. If the oil industry completely shut down today we'd already be losing money despite the nest egg. And they do expect the workforce to non-workforce balance to get worse...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So either they force all landlords/etc in the country to install at least one charging point per apartment/tenant or they have to drop their 100% target.
I agree that is a huge hurdle, however that is one reason hydrogen fuel cells will make for a sizable component of electric cars. Otherwise I agree, apartment dwellers would have a rough time with electric cars even if they all cycled out of a nearby charging station once a week or so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are 67 countries that are larger, and 117 with more people. Norway is a mid-sized country with a small population - at best. It's close to the size of California, with about 25% the population of the Los Angeles metro area. Small and lightly populated.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The EU gets a lot more oil from the Middle East than the US. In fact, our biggest supplier is Iraq, at around 6% of our supplies. We're in the Middle East mainly to provide stability and access to oil for our allies in the EU and Asia - not for our own use.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Canada is a wee bit bigger than Norway, however. We have a shitload of empty space an EV needs to take you through in a way that is dependable because getting stuck in one of those empty spaces when it is -30C can be a bitch. Well, people have died. You think there is cellphone coverage everywhere? Think again. Welcome to Canada.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm a Tesla owner AND I have PV solar on my roof. But I think it's pretty clear, once you really look at the facts, that all the subsidies aren't too practical.
We're still early enough in the technology curve for EVs so they cost a premium price to purchase, and have more "hidden costs" that are less often talked about. (EG. You probably need to upgrade the electrical power in your garage so you can charge one of these cars without it taking 2 days to charge back up.) If you compromise on the costs, buying a less capable EV, the trade-off is range and quite likely, battery longevity. (Your Nissan Leaf or Smart4Two electric has no cooling system for the battery pack.) That means, you're talking about a customer-base who can afford to buy one either with or without the tax breaks.
Meanwhile, the fact that government DOES offer the breaks or subsidies acts as a negative to some of the folks who haven't purchased one yet. They view it as indicating the technology isn't ready for prime-time yet, if it needs those breaks to make good economic sense.
As per usual, I think government needs to just step aside and stop trying to influence what consumers freely choose to buy with their money. I bought my used Tesla because I thought the performance was unbeatable in the price range (0-60MPH times on these are amazing) and because I liked all the technology in the car. Nobody else gives you an iPad sized LCD display in the dash, from the factory! It also makes your expenses a little more consistent and predictable. The monthly car payment is about 2x what I used to pay, but you know what to expect each month. You don't get dinged here and there, all month long, as you pay for gasoline you use, and oil changes are a thing of the past. It's not likely to go through more than maybe 1 set of brake pads during its whole life, since regen braking means they get used very lightly. There's no complex transmission to wear out or need maintenance either.
We're still early enough in the technology curve for EVs so they cost a premium price to purchase, and have more "hidden costs" that are less often talked about.
Yes, we need you early adopters to pay for figuring that stuff out. Thanks!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Many Canadians drive well into the wilderness to go to the cottage or go camping. A lot of times that is in the winter. There are a lot of road trips to national parks, etc.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Many Canadians have two vehicles. An electric is an excellent 2nd vehicle, wish I could get the wife one. It would get a lot of use and we'd still have the truck for longer trips, including going into the bush and even getting into town when there's been a dump of snow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Electric cars can never be "hand-me-downs" to the poor.
Why on earth not? You don't need to replace a well conditioned battery every few years; researchers estimated the useful life of a Tesla battery at 500k miles at least, and numbers from the field are starting to back up those claims. There's this TV show here they MOT old cars, and they had a Tesla in with 300k km on it, and it had lost a little less than 10% of its battery capacity. By the way, at 300k it was still using the original brake discs, and was only on its second set of brake pads. Some parts of the car are harder to repair but they need those repairs far less often, and a lot of the other stuff is still fairly conventional.
Apparently a lot of the cheaper EVs don't condition their batteries very well. But those car makers are learning their lesson and are making changes. We're still learning how to apply this tech in a durable and economical way, and in a decade or so we will have cheaper EVs hitting the second hand market, with batteries that are still going strong.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Norway is also sparsely populated. Also, the vast majority of Canadians do not spend a lot of time driving through empty spaces, most of them live in urban and suburban areas (more than 80% live in metropolitan areas, and more than a third live in the Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver areas), and they usually drive a few km to work, shop, go out, etc.
You should have sourced your figures properly as POOMA.
12 years. Pah.
Many Canadians drive well into the wilderness to go to the cottage or go camping. A lot of times that is in the winter. There are a lot of road trips to national parks, etc.
You would have to define what you mean by "many", since as a Canadian I would dispute that "many drive well into the wilderness" (it's certainly very far from "most"). By my experience, most people in the GTA drive less than 2-3 hrs (around 300 km) when they go camping, to the cottage or wherever (Muskoka does not fit the description of "well into the wilderness", I'm sorry).
Norwegians are also very outdoorsy people, my impression is that the average Norwegian is actually outdoorsier than the average Canadian.
Who's said anything of the sort? I think people have said that Norway is an excellent example of how a government can use its powers of taxation to change citizen behaviour. Norwegians (and many other Europeans) are by and large pretty comfortable with the notion of regulated markets with taxation used to incentivise particular behaviours, and are pretty uncomfortable with the notion of free markets unfettered by regulation.
You can get the car nice and toasty to a schedule or remote.
Also if extreme cold don't need to keep the ICE ticking overnight.
The first generation of EVs like the Nissan Leaf are now reaching the second hard market in reasonable numbers (in the UK). This is because they are coming off lease from the original owners. A second hard one is still expensive, but over time they will trickle down as they depreciate. I know a few people with new and second-hand Leafs, and they all love them. With ICE manufacture on the road to being phased out, the transition is going to happen in our lifetime.
Canadian here. I just spent the last 5 mins thinking of all the people that I know and how many of them have a single car. And I couldn't come up with one. I have friends and colleagues who live in downtown Toronto and they have two cars. My elderly in-laws have two cars. We have three cars, all of which serve different purposes. Truck for hauling large loads (we have a few acres and like to do gardening), Hybrid PHEV for daily commute to/from work, convertible for the summer).
Even Muskoka has a supercharger station, close to Bracebridge which should qualify as "the middle of nowhere". Parts of Muskoka region are well developed, but there are huge parts of it that are not. Since I live in KW, it does take me around 3 hours to get to the cabin and it's definitely in the wilderness. No cell signal for miles, no roads, no electricity.
For example a student who goes home on weekends and at every semester break probably can't get by with an EV if they go to school >300 miles from home. Someone who spends a good deal of their leisure time hiking far from the city probably can't get by with a EV. Someone who spends their weekends visiting other towns, cities and the countryside can't get by with an EV.
What decade d you live in? A Tesla model D can go 335 miles on a charge, and the long range Model 3 can go 310 miles. There also also superchargers in most large cities now making almost any trip practical. I go hiking a lot and >300 miles of range is plenty to reach anywhere you are day hiking, even over a weekend....
I've been looking at it for a while and the ONLY place I'm not sure I could get around one very well is Utah. But even there you could make it just fine if you were on the highway, then dipped down into the southern end and relied on electric power from hotels for the night.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
except most people pay no more than $5k for a designated second vehicle
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
how many people do you know that have a $30k plus second vehicle?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
sure, places have charging stations. get stuck behind a couple people behind one and there goes your schedule for the entire day.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Interesting statistic. Probably depends on what that second vehicle is used for with more spent when a job depends on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Norway generates about 90% of it's electrical power via Hydro.
Yup. So do a couple of other countries (e.g.: Switzerland) and in the grand scheme of things, with a few key exceptions (of the top of my head: India, China and Australia - you can google to find actual studies on the subject) most countries have power generation mixes that make EV slightly less polluting than ICE over their lifetime.
(Yup, even countries like the US that burn coal : turns out that big central optimized power plants are more efficient than an engine miniaturized enough to fit in a car)
That, and the fact the country could fit into Texas twice, you have the perfect place for electric cars.
Now, how does *that* has anything to do with EVs ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Taxes in my country only allow business vehicles to be used as a business vehicle. Sure people might buy a bit more expensive vehicle because their personal vehicle can be 10-20% written against business taxes but we're not getting from $5k to $30k here.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I own a vehicle specifically because I don't want to negotiate and shop every time I need to travel. I especially hate dealing with rental companies. Besides, I need every cent that I save on gas to make the EV worthwhile.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I was talking about commuting vehicle and the need to get to work reliably
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If you're just commuting a short distance, you can get by with a less reliable (older) gasoline car. If your car breaks down and there is a tow truck $50 away then it's a PITA but hardly worthwhile the money it costs for a bulletproof car. The sharpest demand is for the long road trips. I have a lot of medical history in my family. Personally, I want to know I can drive to the nearest large city in a fairly bad storm in the case of an emergency. That means 3 hours in fairly bad east-coast weather. Granted, many people around here don't need to be quite so cautious but they still need to be self-sufficient. Communiting for us isn't just a bunch of dry pavement.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I forgot to add, that is the job for the vehicle I pay $30K plus for. The other one is easy to buy.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Well if they want to give up their independence from an EV charge then fine. Maybe I just happen to know a lot of people who go camping in the middle of nowhere.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Canadian here... We have three cars, all of which serve different purposes. Truck for hauling large loads (we have a few acres and like to do gardening), Hybrid PHEV for daily commute to/from work, convertible for the summer).
Is that last bit a joke? Like the Swiss Navy, or something?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Is that last bit a joke? Like the Swiss Navy, or something?
Note: Canada has a summer. In places where people actually live (like southern Ontario and southern Quebec), it gets significantly hotter in the summer than in many other places with mild climates and mild winters (like the UK or Germany for example).
sure, places have charging stations. get stuck behind a couple people behind one and there goes your schedule for the entire day.
I'm sure than in 1905 there were lots of people saying "sure places have gas stations. Get stuck behind a couple people behind one and there goes your schedule for the entire day. I can just zoom by on my horse and there's lots of places I can feed it quickly..."
Yes, we are in the early days of EV adoption. Yes, there is not enough infrastructure everywhere yet. This will change. It will change more quickly than most people think.
And about half the population of Los Angeles County, in a place about the size of Montana.
As we're talking about Europe, the accepted standard of measurement is " an area the size of Wales".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I know a lot of people in Toronto with zero cars. Mostly those living downtown, or in the more traditional urban areas close to it. I think it's a generational thing. Younger folks are less likely to have a car (and be members of zipcar or some such car-sharing service) even if they grew up in the suburbs in families owning 2-3 vehicles. Their parents might still have two cars making it easy for them to ocassionally borrow one when needed for an out-of-town trip, which further reduces their incentive to buy their own vehicle.
lol yup. in KW region, we regularly get 30C+ summer days, the 25C+ weather even extended well into Autumn/Fall in 2018..
The change that needs to happen is to be able to charge a battery as fast as filling the gas tank.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The change that needs to happen is to be able to charge a battery as fast as filling the gas tank.
Yes and no.
Sure, it would be great to be able to charge an EV to a comparable stored energy level in the same time it now takes to fill up $25 worth of gasoline. It is however not necessary.
The only place where I can get fuel for an ICE vehicle is at a station with a pump. An EV I can charge overnight in my garage (or whenever I am home). I can plug in away from home in a parking lot (at the office, the mall, the restaurant, a hotel, etc.). Personal cars are parked most of the day, and if you could charge everywhere where you park, slow charging is acceptable. At home this is already available basically for all house owners. Many apartment buildings now have chargers too. There are many public ones at or near office buildings, shopping and entertainment venues, etc. Since electricity is already routed basically everywhere, it's easier to eventually have a (slow) charger at every corner than to have a liquid fuel pump at every corner.
This reduces the need for quick charges for most people. Especially when coupled with the growth in battery capacity in the average EV. The only time one would need a quick charge is for some reason one forgot or was not able to charge at the home / office / wherever, or when on a long (intercity, cross-country) trip. In that case, doing a full charge (0 - 100%) in 15-30 minutes is acceptable. Yes it's longer than filling up with gas (which is 5-6 minutes tops, when you have a large empty tank) but it would happen a lot less often. In total, you'd spending a lot less time at a station - and when this is part of a long trip, you would take longer breaks anyway. If I'm doing Toronto - Montreal, I don't care if I spent 5 mins to fill up on gas and then 25 minutes having a snack and a coffee at the station's bar/store, or if the car is charging for 30 minutes while I have my break with snack & coffee. There would just have to be enough charging stations so you don't waste too much time waiting in line.
"for most people" being the key word. And even thought people don't really know they will never run into a situation where they will need to charge on the road.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.