Norway on track to be first to go all-electric
Norway on track to be first to go all-electric
Nine in 10 new cars in the country are now battery-powered, and it aims to hit 100% later this year.
Summary
Norway leads the world in electric vehicle (EV) adoption, with EVs making up nearly 90% of new car sales in 2024 and over 30% of all cars on its roads.
This shift, driven by decades of policies like tax exemptions for EVs, higher taxes on fossil fuel cars, and perks like free parking, has put Norway on track to phase out new fossil fuel car sales by 2025.
The country's wealth, renewable hydroelectric power, and extensive charging network have enabled its EV revolution, serving as a model for other nations.
I don't know how to tell you, but do you know how much waste is generated after lithium mining? Also, look at where lithium is mined, in poor countries where no one cares about the environment.
First of all: way to go Norway! 🥳
Additionally, bravo to the BBC for selecting a pic of one of the most Norwegian-looking people in existence for the article pic 😂
So now that Norway has 99% renewables and will soon reach 99% electric vehicles, they'll stop drilling oil in the North Sea, right?
They're best positioned for the Contraction and Convergence strategy so continuing to pump and sell oil is antithetical to their sustainability stance.
Unless they're creating a walled garden while letting everyone else around them burn - tho let's hope that's not the case as once the AMOC collapses and brings the likes of 160km/h bomb cyclones to it's territories it wouldn't matter how green they've been.
That means Norway will sell the fossil fuel they don't use to somewhere else.
As I said in another comment in this thread:
Now if they truly believed that fossil fuels were needed for a sustainable transition - then surely they would give out their trillions of oil and gas revenue to countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh to help them rebuild from the environmental disasters they're experiencing to deploy more sustainable infrastructure and housing.
When it comes to globally warming they really can't lose.
Not true, Norway is remarkably warm compared to similar latitudes (i.e. Canada) due to the Gulf Stream and the resulting coastal current. If that collapses the sea will freeze and Norway will no longer be the mild climate it is now.
Congrats Norway.
But I was told by Susan on Facebook that EVs can't work in a cold place!
I think Susan meant in cold rural place where it's hundreds of kilometers to a larger city and days trip to EV maintenance.
Local boy can dismantle and assemble her current Toyota Hilux if necessary.
From a mechanical standpoint, this is a silly argument. I've worked on cars for approx. 15 years as a hobby/side hustle, owned a mobile mechanic business for 2.5 years, and worked at a auto shop for a time as well. Trust me, EV's are far more simple, hardware-wise. You could argue they're not simple, software-wise, for the average consumer to work on themselves, but that would ignore the relative complexity of modern CANbus systems in new cars, with dozens of subsystems feeding multiple computers, all of which can malfunction and cause problems for the whole system. Such as when an led tail-light breaks and that bricks the whole car, leaving the owner potentially stranded.
ICE vehicles have to rely on and maintain multiple pressurized systems (with dozens of specialized seals), vacuum, dozens (sometimes hundreds) of sensors, relays, and valves, not to mention rapid heat differentials, all of the moving parts with bearings and added weights to counteract various forces...
I love the idea of only having to work on suspension/steering/brakes from time to time. Have a motor issue? Unplug it, undo a few bolts, and put a new one in over a single beer. Sounds awesome to me..
Good thing an electric motor requires less maintenance than an ICE. For the rest it’s the same as every car. Only the tires wear down faster, the brakes might rust when you always one-pedal drive and for certain EVs you need to flush and recharge the coolant once in a while.
A guy in the US drives about 40 miles on average a day and there's evs that can do 10x that now
Yeah. It's the range that's killer. EVs can run in cold all day long. But running heavy duty heating to keep the cabin comfortable and the windows clear of ice, plus heating the battery pack to maintain performance, can cut the already overstated manufacturer range down by 30-40% or more. Which can bring a marginally OK travel range in a lot of areas down to "shit this isn't enough".
Nowhere near as much of a problem if you keep it plugged in and warm up prior to leaving, which most EVs have a timer feature to do automatically. Gasoline powered vehicles also lose significant range in the cold, it’s just not as noticeable to some because ICE are already extremely inefficient.
Unfortunately this doesn’t help people who can’t charge at home, but that’s an infrastructure/housing issue not an EV issue.
Theres also the the problem that EVs are quite low profile. Shit happens if you hit an ice bolder on the road and your battery casing gets dented.
Hey it’s Karen, let’s not drag Susan in to this.
Amazing how easily it's happened with barely any effort. We could have fixed climate change 50 years ago but the fossil fuel industry wanted their money so now the earth is fucked
To be absolutely clear, Norway has achieved this by selling oil to other countries. This wasn't a heroic sacrifice or noble vanguard effort.
The ability to pay for subsidies has no relation to the source of the funds. What matters is GDP, overall national wealth. And Norway is only slightly ahead of the US. Considering the US's far superior manufacturing capability, if Norway could go all electric, than the US certainly could have by now. Norway's had to import almost all its electric cars; the US can make its own cars.
You mean all that oil money that was spent on lying to the public and bribing politicians could have been spent on solving the problem this whole time?
“The country's wealth, renewable hydroelectric power, and extensive charging network have enabled its EV revolution”
These are not barely any effort. These are huge factors.
Norwegians aren't more environmentally-minded than people elsewhere, she reckons. "I don't think a green mindset has much to do with it. It has to do with strong policies, and people gradually understanding that driving an electric car is possible."
Yet Norway is also a very wealthy nation, which thanks to its huge oil and gas exports, has a sovereign wealth fund worth more than $1.7tn (£1.3tn). This means it can more easily afford big infrastructure-build projects, and absorb the loss of tax revenue from the sale of petrol and diesel cars and their fuel.
The country also has an abundance of renewable hydro electricity, which accounts for 88% of its production capacity.
I don't think Norway's wealth or energy supply has anything to do with it.
Aren't US taxes on gas cars lower than Norwegian taxes on electric cars? US gasoline is insanely cheap.
Norwegian evs have to pay 25% sales tax over $50k and they're also taxed based on weight.
https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/
Come to think of it, the US is in the same economic situation as Norway, as an extremely wealthy oil exporter. Any western country jealous of Norway could match it if they just had the political will.
US gas is subsidized by the US government. Norway subsidizes electric cars instead.
https://www.iea.org/reports/fossil-fuels-consumption-subsidies-2022
its huge oil and gas exports
It's a lot easier for your country to "go green" when being able to do that kind of depends on lots of other places still setting things on fire, innit?
What are you complaining about? Are you unhappy that Norway takes on many of the issues of going non-reliant of oil, developing systems to handle northern, less benign weather? You know, from where I stand, a few hundred miles south would be a so much easier place to be, where the sun is plentiful all year long and the winters short and mild...
Dude!!? All 2000 cars???
Educate yourself it's 1999 cars Gunderson passed last night in a car crash
But what about batteries which also poising environment after extraction.
Hog foot then!
It's not free parking anymore for a while now
Yeah, but having that temporarily has helped people transition, is the point.