Norway now has more electric cars on the road than pure petrol cars.
Of the 2.8 million registered passenger cars in the country, 754,303 are electric and 753,905 are petrol, according to figures from the Road Traffic Information Council (OFV). At the same time, the number of diesel cars continues to fall.
“Norway is moving rapidly towards becoming the first country in the world with a passenger car fleet dominated by electric cars,” says Øyvind Solberg Thorsen, director of OFV.
He continues: “But it will take some time before we get there, because there are still one million registered passenger cars with diesel engines in the country. The pace we are seeing in the replacement of the passenger car fleet now may indicate that in 2026 we will also have more electric cars than diesel cars.”
Thorsen believes the landmark happened this month for two reasons: that almost everything registered as new is electric; and that many ‘enthusiasts’ cars are deregistered for the winter, and there are so many of them that it always affects the stock figures.
Twenty years ago, in September 2004, there were over 1.6 million petrol cars and around 230,000 diesel cars in Norway, and only approximately 1,000 electric cars. From 2007 and for the next 10 years, there wasa surge in electric car sales thanks to favourable tax regimes.
