The Porsche Taycan Just Outsold Every Gas-Only Car Combined in Norway
Nearly 84 percent of all new cars registered last month in Norway were electric.
Electric cars may still be a relative novelty here in America but they're very much the norm in Norway, with EVs accounting for two-thirds of all new cars sold in 2021. The EV-to-non-EV ratio in Norway is growing, and the country has crossed a wild milestone when it comes to just how dominant the electric car is getting over there. According to January 2022 new car registration data reported by the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV), not only did EVs climb to account for 83.7 percent of all new cars registered, the Porsche Taycan alone outsold every non-electrified car combined.
Think about that for a second. Every gas-only car—Toyota Corollas, Honda Civics, Merc C-Classes—bundled together and still not managing to outsell a highly expensive luxury car that only runs on electricity.
Granted, this being one month's sales in a country with a population of just 5.3 million, the numbers are by no means huge. In total, 175 pure gas cars were registered in Norway last month whereas 181 Taycans were introduced into the system. Other, even more popular EVs that also single-handedly beat out the entire field of ICE cars include the Mercedes EQA and EQC, the Nissan Leaf, Polestar 2, Kia's EV6, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Volkswagen's ID.4, BMW iX, and Hyundai's Ioniq 5. Sitting at the top spot as Norway's best-selling model is the Audi Q4 E-Tron electric crossover, with 643 units put on the road and accounting for 8.1 percent of all new car registrations.
Ninety percent of all new cars registered were electrified in some capacity while 19 out of the top 20 best-selling models were pure electric. (The lone gas-sipper here happened to be the Toyota RAV4 which is available as a hybrid, but not as a pure BEV.)
Another fun fact to mull over: Porsche only sold 185 cars in Norway last month, which means Taycans accounted for 98 percent of them. Ninety-eight.
Also notable is the remarkably low number of Teslas registered there last month. While the California automaker is essentially synonymous with EVs in the U.S., no Teslas managed to get onto Norway's top 20 best-selling cars list in January, nor did the company get into the country's list of top 10 automakers. There's reason to believe, though, this is down to a supply issue rather than Norwegians suddenly and mysteriously falling out of love with Elon Musk's product, with OFV citing "no large boatloads of cars arriving in Norway during January." The Model 3, for example, was the country's most popular car last year but fell to 48th place in January 2022.
A huge part of why Norway has adopted electric cars so quickly and readily is because of legislation. The Scandinavian country will be banning the sale of gas and diesel-powered cars outright starting in 2025, just three short years from now and 10 years earlier than most other jurisdictions that have stated ICE bans. The Norwegian government also gives out hefty tax exemptions on the purchase of electric cars, not to mention discounted road tolls, public parking, and ferry access. Of course, getting a country of just 5.3 million people to accept and adopt electric cars as mainstream is a whole different can of worms than it is to do it for a place like the U.S. where there are 330 million people, many living in wildly diverse environments.
But if Norway really is exactly 10 years ahead of everybody else in the electric car game, expect single Porsche electric models to outsell gas-only cars wholesale everywhere by about 2032. What a world that would be.
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