Tesla just became the most popular carmaker in Norway – where 32% of all cars are electric

Tesla breaks a new quarterly sales record in Norway, with more than 1,800 cars registered with a week left in the quarter.
Tesla became the overall most popular automaker in Norway in December. It also broke its own daily record with 266 cars registered in a single day.
Norway now has more than 10 percent of the global all-electric car fleet. But the government's generous subsidies will not last forever.

Norway is by far the world leader in electric cars, and that's fantastic news for Tesla: It's on track to become the bestselling carmaker in Norway in December, reports industry news outlet Electrek.

A record 1,861 Tesla vehicles have been registered in Norway this month – nearly triple the amount of 690 vehicles sold in December 2016, according to Teslastats.no, an informal but widely cited site that collects Norwegian electric vehicle data.

Tesla's Model X was the most popular car model in December, followed by Model S and the VW Golf, Electrek says. With a slowdown in sales expected during the holidays, the rankings are unlikely to change during the last days of 2017.

"Solid range, practical solutions and high security make more and more choose Model S and Model X,” said Even Sandvold Roland, head of communications at Tesla Norway, to Dagens Naeringsliv.

The Norwegian business noted that on December 18, Tesla delivered more cars (266) than Jaguar did in the past year.

Last time Tesla was Norway’s bestselling carmaker on a monthly basis was September 2013, when the Model S launched - just months after the government introduced new subsidies for electric vehicles.

The promised land of electric vehicles

Norway, with a population of 5,3 million, is in a class by itself in terms of electric vehicle adoption.

Since 2013, the country has gone from a few thousand to more than 135,000 plug-in or electric vehicles (PEV) registered; it sells one in ten of the world's all-electric vehicles; and more than half of all new cars are now PEVs (globally, that share is still under 1%). In absolute terms, Norway’s PEV fleet trails only giants like US, China and Japan.

Although the rate of adoption has stunned most everybody, Norway's PEV boom has been part of the government's –costly – plan to phase out petrol powered cars by 2025. "EVs are exempt from car-purchase taxes and the 25 percent sales tax levied on just about everything else, and they get a break on annual fees," said Sture Portvik, an Oslo city official to Cleantechnica.

Moreover, electric vehicle drivers enjoy almost a godlike status on Norwegian roads, with perks including free charging at Tesla supercharger stations, bus lane access, and exemption from fees on toll roads and ferries.

The PEV incentives play an outsize part in why Norwegians prefer to go electric: According to NEVA, a national electric car association, about 72 per cent of buyers are choosing an electric car for economic reasons and just 26 per cent for environmental ones. This dynamic was on show recently in Denmark, where Tesla and other electric vehicle sales all but died out after the government pulled back PEV subsidies (before re-introducing them again).

But even in Norway – now basking in the glow of being a global EV pioneer – those incentives won’t last forever. Even though a “Tesla tax” proposal fell through last month, policymakers are set to rein in the subsidies that helped Tesla become a best-seller in Norway – starting with a revision of tax incentives from January 2018.

Indeed, with almost 60 percent of Tesla's fourth quarter sales concentrated in the first three weeks of December, it is not entirely unfeasible that Norwegians are taking full advantage ahead of January.

Until the phase-outs take effect however, Tesla – with Model 3 in the pipeline – can look forward to new records in Norway.

Norway’s electric car boom, a timeline:

Summer 2013: Government introduces financial incentives, including weight tax deduction for plug-in hybrids

September 2013: The launch of Tesla Model S makes Norway the first country in the world to have electric a car topping the new car sales monthly ranking

March 2014: 1% of Norway’s cars are plug-in electric

December 2016: 100,000th all-electric vehicle registered

April 2017: Half of all new cars sold are either electric or plug-in

December 2017: Tesla becomes the most popular carmaker on a monthly basis in Norway

December 2017: 32% of Norway’s cars are plug-in electric

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