Norway is electrically powering forward in the clean vehicle market. Last year using tax-incentives, the country was able to boost battery-powered and hybrid cars sales up to 29 percent of all cars sold in the country last year.
Though less than 5% of the total fleet of cars in Norway are electric, the country’s transport minister calls it “realistic” to expect an end to sales of new cars powered by fossil fuels by 2025. Fiscal incentives, not an outright ban, will bring this about. Eye-popping purchase taxes typically double the cost of a high-emission car, but these and other levies are waived for clean ones. Drivers of zero-emission vehicles also skip costly road tolls, cross fjords by ferry for free, park without paying in cities and use bus lanes to whizz by other commuters.
As electrek.co points out, Norway is far afield in electric vehicles.
In September 2016, 28.8% of new car sales were plug-in electric vehicles and all-electric cars had 19.0% market share. It’s 10 times what most countries are doing these days thanks to EV incentives like the 25% VAT tax exemption.
Norway pushed the limits last month with record plug-in electric sales reaching 37% market share in the country’s passenger car market. Over 4,800 plug-in electric vehicles were delivered in the country in January – helped by strong BMW i3 sales (622 units) and some PHEV vehicles like the Volvo XC90 (398 units) and the Volkswagen Passat GTE (411 units).
They are optimistic that by the end of the year new electric cars sales might account for more than half of all new cars bought by Norwegians. Meanwhile in our country, Trump’s henchmen (and henchwomen) are stalling much needed infrastructure upgrades to our country’s transportation system.
