OSLO: Four out of every five cars sold in Norway in 2022 were battery-powered Electric Vehicles (EVs) in what was a record-setting year for the country’s race to achieve the EV goal.
As many as 138,265 new electric cars, mostly manufactured by US carmaker Tesla, were sold in the Scandinavian country in 2022, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said in a statement. This makes up 79 per cent of the total passenger car sales of the year, beating the previous record of 64.5 percent in 2021.
Comparatively, electric vehicles accounted for just 8.6 per cent of new car registrations in the European Union during the first nine months of 2022. In December alone, EVs made up 82.8 per cent of sales as Norwegians rushed to buy them before the enforcement of a tax change in 2023.
Norway’s bid to end petrol and diesel car sales by 2025
About one in five cars in Norway are currently electric as the country aims for all of its new cars to be “zero emission” by 2025.
To promote sales, EVs have benefitted from being tax-free, as well as having lesser fares for road tolls and public parking. But with their surging popularity and subsequent income losses for the state, Norwegian authorities have started rolling back some of the benefits linked to electric cars.
As of January 1, the 25 per cent exemption of value-added tax on the purchase of new electric cars is now applicable to only the first 500,000 Norwegian kroner ($50,500) of the vehicle’s price.
– APP
