Tesla was all the rage for a couple of years, especially due to their exceptional (and free) charging infrastructure and weak competition. The government has done a lot to facilitate the expansion of the public charging infrastructure and this makes it more attractive to buy electric cars from other brands. Teslas are so common here know that it has lost much of its novelty. There are so many cars to choose from now.
It seems like Volkswagen is making some real inroads in the EV market based on that data. Is this correct? What has fueled it—is there a particular model?
Interesting site. Here in Germany, most of the electric cars I see are delivery vehicles by Deutsche Post or Renault Zoes (I don't own one, but regularly drive a Zoe (carsharing), I have no complaints). The market share for Germany seems to reflect that. I have never seen a Tesla on the road here.
This is almost completely a result of artificial government imposed constraints that make ICE vehicles exceedingly more expensive there. It really has nothing to do with free market choice. A new Tesla Model 3 costs less than a Subaru Outback or Mini Cooper [0]. A VW eGolf also costs less than a base model ICE Golf.
Are you comparing a large car, Subaru Outback, to a small car, Model 3? Model X would be a fairer comparison, where model X is 300k NOK more in base model.
Norway is subsidizing electric vehicles (with cash) and disincentivizing ICE vehicles (with higher fuel costs and other levers). However, vehicles of all kinds are subsidized by society by other means [0]. If we all paid the true costs of driving, our built environment and society would be structured radically different.
Even just building roads shaped countries and cities in a certain way.
Killing trains, increasing car usage, encouraging shipping things from far away locations.
Hopefully with the next generation of city planning we won't be so stupid and create environments which are more liveable where people waste less time commuting and buy things as close to home as possible (even if the last point may have more to do with taxation / regulations / working conditions differences in various countries more than roads).
Norway has been leading the pack in this regard for quite some time. A few Government incentives, both financial and for instance the ability to use dedicated bus lanes (now discontinued in Oslo I think?) majorly helped.
One of the large issues around uptake is simply infrastructure. Here in Ireland, it is still patchy at best. We had an EV (Nissan) from around 2016 but gave it up in 2020 as there was simply too much anxiety around out of service public chargers and lack of backup. Range anxiety is definitely possible to overcome, but it requires the state to back it up with resources: Norway has most definitively done this.
Final thought: no surprise that ID.3 is making inroads in a huge way on sales. It's a sweet spot of a good car at an attainable price that looks, for want of a better word, 'normal'. Some EVs seem to be designed 'differently' almost for the sake of it - and while some will love that, it ends up adding another hurdle for a certain segment of the market I believe.
I drive occasionally and the first time I drove an electric last year, I barely made it to a charging station an hour outside Oslo and not close to another city. I had to wait a couple of hours before hopping to a fast charger. I treated it like a gas car, but after that, I changed both my attitude and a number of driving habits to get the most of them. I am happy the wide breadth of support across the country is available to maintain charging stations. Just on cost alone, I would prefer electric for rentals.
This is mostly because aerodynamics become very important in an EV, and weight becomes (relatively) less important.
That changes substantially many design decisions, affecting a lot of things you might not expect - dramatic changes to the visual appearance, focus on AC rather than a sunroof, internal airflow changes to prevent fogging, etc.
Yes the amsterdam city center is bike centric. But around it its all cars... Diesel cars are banned in the ring now, and there are TESLA's everywhere (lease car owners). The tax incentives where crazy, you could ride a Tesla for as cheap as 150 euro per month...
But that now has stopped above 40k euro, and its the Volkswagen group that builds electrified cars in the sweet spot.
Sell oil, buy electric cars. Is this the definition of hypocrisy? At least it is better than the alternative, sell oil and buy fossile fuel cars.
Edit: I would like to rephrase the last sentence as "At least it is better than _an_ alternative, which is to sell oil and buy fossile fuel cars." which is a fairer categorisation of the problem space and less consumerist.
As a Norwegian, I've been thinking the same for a while. The argument that "our" oil would just get replaced by some other oil if we stopped pumping feels hollow.
That being said, given how much of our workforce is directly or indirectly tied to pumping up oil and gas, I also get that simply stopping the pumps tomorrow will pretty much make the country collapse.
As such I think that spending our black money to help foster greener technologies like EVs is at least better than nothing.
We're also using our oil fund a bit more actively[1] when it comes to climate and investments.
All developed countries "emit" a lot of CO2 by importing goods manufactured overseas in countries that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels including coal. There's just no going around the fact that this is a global problem.
> Sell oil, buy electric cars. Is this the definition of hypocrisy?
In what way? It's not like Norway is responsible for the worlds dependence on oil, or that they've ever claimed that they're saving the world. They haven't said that others should stop using oil/gasoline right now either. They're just trying their best to help develop alternatives.
If you have oil, what's the third alternative? Should Norway just not have extracted any of its oil ever? Is that realistic to expect? Would it even have helped in any way, or would it just be offset by increased production in the middle east?
It's a huge discussion around this in Norway btw. The green party wants to cut all oil production by 2035. Obviously it's not very popular, although the green party has been growing quite well recently. The main argument against it is that cutting oil/gas production will easily be offset by other nations, most of which have worse CO2/methane pollution from their oil/gas production, and cutting gas to Germany could increase coal usage. It has been a big focus on that in Norway, to the point that Equinor is building a wind power plant to supply oil rigs with cleaner electricity rather than burning gas in inefficient power plants on the oil rigs. Of course, a lot of people are saying that this is green washing. Personally I'm ambivalent. Cutting production early would send a very strong signal, and could perhaps push other countries to cut oil/gas use, but at least building those off-shore wind power plants will help reduce cost of off-shore wind.
Norway is not the "good guy" here, but then nobody is. Everyone that has cheap/easy access to oil reserves has developed them. Expecting anybody to do otherwise is naive. Everyone in the world is hopelessly dependent on oil. We're all product of the circumstances of the 20th century, and all we can do is to try to do the best we can going forward.
A bit off-topic but I've been wondering how well self driving technologies will work in Nordic countries where the roads look pretty different in summer and in winter. At least for me, the one of the biggest interest for Tesla comes from its (current but especially future) self driving capabilities.
This includes hybrids. It's really questionable to incentivize hybrid vehicles and selling it as a electrified success.
Discussions about the efficiency/environmental impact/... of combustion v.s. electric aside, it's obvious that driving a huge battery around will burn more fuel.
I think this can only be seen as a success for electrified motors if it's proven that they're actually being used.
If the article is to be believed this does not include hybrids. The first sentence reads in part "... where the sale of electric cars has overtaken those powered by petrol, diesel and hybrid engines ... " (my emphasis)
Plug-in hybrids used for routine urban driving (commutes, errands, etc...) are effectively EVs. I don't have usage data for Norway specifically, but the numbers that have been thrown around elsewhere are something like 20-30% of the driving is done using the gasoline engine.
Almost everyone celebrating "electric cars" in that headline is really cheering for carbon reduction, and this for sure qualifies.
> Discussions about the efficiency/environmental impact/... of combustion v.s. electric aside, it's obvious that driving a huge battery around will burn more fuel.
I am not sure if I am misunderstanding something here, but did you ever compare fuel statistics of ICE/HEV/PHEV?
They use money from all of the carbon they sell to provide massive tax discounts for electric cars, so the incentives are skewed to electric, so we shouldn't read too much into this in terms of market preference.
Consider buying VOLKSWAGEN group stock instead of TESLA stock... There are electric volkswagens everywhere, and their lineup of electric cars is amazing.
It looks way better in real life than on the site.
With Tesla... These tesla model 3s are everywhere in the Netherlands, and they are a bit minimal in design and expensive.. A bit boring to be honest. But thats good, electrify the world!
[+] [-] anthony_r|5 years ago|reply
https://eu-evs.com/marketShare
[+] [-] messo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] INTPenis|5 years ago|reply
I have no numbers to back this up, just observations of a cyclist commuter in Malmö.
Edit: According to this absolutely awful website[1] it's up to 113,790 EVs in Sweden in 2020.
And according to this[2] much better website jan-nov in 2020 saw 93k gasoline driven cars vs. 21k EVs. So we're not even close to Norway. :(
1. https://www.elbilsstatistik.se/elbilsstatistik
2. https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/tran...
[+] [-] WoodenChair|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lqet|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmcollins|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acvny|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomkat0789|5 years ago|reply
It adds up to much less than 100%. What are the missing brands?
[+] [-] CharlesW|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burgerquizz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphextron|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.skatteetaten.no/globalassets/tabeller-og-satser/...
[+] [-] unethical_ban|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arve0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thraway2020|5 years ago|reply
[0] "Should Law Subsidize Driving?" by Greg Shill https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345366
[+] [-] jokethrowaway|5 years ago|reply
Killing trains, increasing car usage, encouraging shipping things from far away locations.
Hopefully with the next generation of city planning we won't be so stupid and create environments which are more liveable where people waste less time commuting and buy things as close to home as possible (even if the last point may have more to do with taxation / regulations / working conditions differences in various countries more than roads).
[+] [-] frantzmiccoli|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noelrock|5 years ago|reply
One of the large issues around uptake is simply infrastructure. Here in Ireland, it is still patchy at best. We had an EV (Nissan) from around 2016 but gave it up in 2020 as there was simply too much anxiety around out of service public chargers and lack of backup. Range anxiety is definitely possible to overcome, but it requires the state to back it up with resources: Norway has most definitively done this.
Final thought: no surprise that ID.3 is making inroads in a huge way on sales. It's a sweet spot of a good car at an attainable price that looks, for want of a better word, 'normal'. Some EVs seem to be designed 'differently' almost for the sake of it - and while some will love that, it ends up adding another hurdle for a certain segment of the market I believe.
[+] [-] bigpeopleareold|5 years ago|reply
I drive occasionally and the first time I drove an electric last year, I barely made it to a charging station an hour outside Oslo and not close to another city. I had to wait a couple of hours before hopping to a fast charger. I treated it like a gas car, but after that, I changed both my attitude and a number of driving habits to get the most of them. I am happy the wide breadth of support across the country is available to maintain charging stations. Just on cost alone, I would prefer electric for rentals.
[+] [-] londons_explore|5 years ago|reply
This is mostly because aerodynamics become very important in an EV, and weight becomes (relatively) less important.
That changes substantially many design decisions, affecting a lot of things you might not expect - dramatic changes to the visual appearance, focus on AC rather than a sunroof, internal airflow changes to prevent fogging, etc.
[+] [-] unionemployee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeWEE|5 years ago|reply
But that now has stopped above 40k euro, and its the Volkswagen group that builds electrified cars in the sweet spot.
[+] [-] jeofken|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerby|5 years ago|reply
May be norwegians will sell their petrol car to less EV-advanced countries before they have no value at all in their home country?
[+] [-] lldbg|5 years ago|reply
Edit: I would like to rephrase the last sentence as "At least it is better than _an_ alternative, which is to sell oil and buy fossile fuel cars." which is a fairer categorisation of the problem space and less consumerist.
[+] [-] magicalhippo|5 years ago|reply
That being said, given how much of our workforce is directly or indirectly tied to pumping up oil and gas, I also get that simply stopping the pumps tomorrow will pretty much make the country collapse.
As such I think that spending our black money to help foster greener technologies like EVs is at least better than nothing.
We're also using our oil fund a bit more actively[1] when it comes to climate and investments.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/for-forste-gang-kaster-oljefondet-u...
[+] [-] anthony_r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WesleyLivesay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] audunw|5 years ago|reply
In what way? It's not like Norway is responsible for the worlds dependence on oil, or that they've ever claimed that they're saving the world. They haven't said that others should stop using oil/gasoline right now either. They're just trying their best to help develop alternatives.
If you have oil, what's the third alternative? Should Norway just not have extracted any of its oil ever? Is that realistic to expect? Would it even have helped in any way, or would it just be offset by increased production in the middle east?
It's a huge discussion around this in Norway btw. The green party wants to cut all oil production by 2035. Obviously it's not very popular, although the green party has been growing quite well recently. The main argument against it is that cutting oil/gas production will easily be offset by other nations, most of which have worse CO2/methane pollution from their oil/gas production, and cutting gas to Germany could increase coal usage. It has been a big focus on that in Norway, to the point that Equinor is building a wind power plant to supply oil rigs with cleaner electricity rather than burning gas in inefficient power plants on the oil rigs. Of course, a lot of people are saying that this is green washing. Personally I'm ambivalent. Cutting production early would send a very strong signal, and could perhaps push other countries to cut oil/gas use, but at least building those off-shore wind power plants will help reduce cost of off-shore wind.
Norway is not the "good guy" here, but then nobody is. Everyone that has cheap/easy access to oil reserves has developed them. Expecting anybody to do otherwise is naive. Everyone in the world is hopelessly dependent on oil. We're all product of the circumstances of the 20th century, and all we can do is to try to do the best we can going forward.
[+] [-] bazzert|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ct0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CogitoCogito|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Proven|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vinni2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerby|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N...
including a nice S-curve:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N...
[+] [-] Uninen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] velmu|5 years ago|reply
https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/prod...
[+] [-] eloeffler|5 years ago|reply
Discussions about the efficiency/environmental impact/... of combustion v.s. electric aside, it's obvious that driving a huge battery around will burn more fuel.
I think this can only be seen as a success for electrified motors if it's proven that they're actually being used.
[+] [-] eisa01|5 years ago|reply
Plugin hybrids were 20% and non-plugin hybrids 9%
Total *EV share of 83%
See slide 21: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/opplysningsraadet-for-vei...
[+] [-] eggman314|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajross|5 years ago|reply
Almost everyone celebrating "electric cars" in that headline is really cheering for carbon reduction, and this for sure qualifies.
[+] [-] davnn|5 years ago|reply
I am not sure if I am misunderstanding something here, but did you ever compare fuel statistics of ICE/HEV/PHEV?
[+] [-] roflchoppa3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glotgizmo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disown|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
This is like someone burning down a forest and then planting a single tree and expecting praise.
[+] [-] outside1234|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gedy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeWEE|5 years ago|reply
Just saw the new ID4, its a super cool car: https://www.volkswagen.nl/modellen/id4
It looks way better in real life than on the site. With Tesla... These tesla model 3s are everywhere in the Netherlands, and they are a bit minimal in design and expensive.. A bit boring to be honest. But thats good, electrify the world!