Almost all of the new cars sold in Norway are electric. Here’s how the country did it.
The Environmental Protection Agency granted California a waiver yesterday that will allow the state to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel-fueled cars by 2035. However, President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration have discussed rolling back such electric vehicle policies.
In Norway, the picture is quite different, where decades of policies have incentivized electric vehicle purchases. As a result, the country is on the cusp of creating the world’s first all electric car market, as Kari Lundgren, energy reporter, wrote in Bloomberg. “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Lundgren about her piece. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kai Ryssdal: There are so many ways that EVs should not be working in Norway, right? It’s cold, there’s lots of hills, and yet somehow they’ve done it. How?
Kari Lundgren: It’s been an amazing journey. I mean, if you look back about a decade, only 3% of the cars on the road were EVs, and today it’s close to 30% and about 96% of sales are EVs. So that’s been an incredible journey. In the mid-’90s, there was actually a homegrown EV. It wasn’t the greatest of EVs. It was boxy and awkward, but there were a lot of policies put in place at the time to sort of incentivize that car. Then fast forward, you started seeing other models being made available. And because those incentives have been in place since the mid-’90s, they were actually price competitive with fossil fuel models, and that was really key to them taking off in Norway.
Ryssdal: When you’re driving around Oslo, what does it look like? Are there high-powered chargers all over the place?
Lundgren: Yeah, it’s incredible, just the range of EVs on the road. I mean, all sorts of different Chinese models, XPengs, Nios, Voyagers, and then, yeah, chargers on pretty much every block of all sorts of different descriptions. Some are from the city. Some are, you know, Tesla ones. Some are Circle K. They actually have been really pushing EV charging. And it’s interesting, because initially, you know, the government did subsidize some of the charging network, but now they don’t need to do that anymore, because it’s actually competitive for companies like Circle K and some of the other oil and gas companies to actually be installing the chargers.
Ryssdal: Since you mentioned oil and gas, Norway has a huge reserve of oil and gas, both buried underground, but also the money in the bank. That helps here, right?
Lundgren: Yeah. I often get people saying, well, Norway had lots of money, so, like, how is this relevant for the rest of the world? And I think what is important to realize that Norway was a first mover here, and there’s always a cost to being a first mover. This was expensive 10 years ago, but now what you’re seeing is that the price of the cars has come down a lot. So where the money has helped has been for building some of that infrastructure. You know, these people weren’t actually paid to buy an EV. What happened is that through through taxation, it was more costly to buy a fossil fuel car, so people naturally chose an EV. But what has happened is that in the tax budget, normally, the taxes you would have made off of having, you know, revenue from fossil fuel cars, the registration tax, Norway can forgo that, because there’s this excess of oil wealth.
Ryssdal: You mention in this piece that government policies have been remarkably consistent over the decades, and that has really helped. And obviously I’m thinking here now of what’s going on in the States and how we are, you know, not consistent in our policies.
Lundgren: Well, it’s so interesting. You mentioned earlier the oil wealth. And if I were to actually say to you, like, what sets Norway apart, I would say that that government consensus has been really critical. Because, you’ve had left leaning governments, you’ve had right we need governments. And either way, they’ve basically kept these policies in place. And it’s a small place, I think, there’s been a bit of pride that Norway’s a world leader in this. There’s something about that as well.
Ryssdal: We should say here, gas powered vehicles are still the majority of cars on the road over there, and they’re going to be there for a good long while.
Lundgren: Yes, and I think that actually also has underpinned this policy, in some ways, is that people aren’t being forced to choose an EV, like they’re being incentivized to do so. And if you’re a farmer up in some of these valleys, you may have legitimate reasons for why you just don’t think an EV makes sense for you. Or you may be somebody who just loves trying driving a fossil fuel car. So I think that’s been really also important in that it takes, like, the air out of the balloon, in terms of the controversy around it. People just are like, “Oh, I’m gonna get a car, and it happens to be an EV”. And I’m excited about that. It’s like, one of the guys in one of the shops I went into, and he’s like, you know, five years ago, it was always a discussion about, like, “Oh, are you gonna buy an EV? That’s gonna be kind of different.” And now it’s like, the opposite, “Oh, you’re buying a fossil fuel car? That’s kind of different. Why are you doing that?” You have to explain yourself, you know. But as you say, there are still fossil fuel cars on the road, and they will be for a while yet.