There's a huge price difference between electric cars and gas fueled cars here in Norway. Gas fueled car buyers have to pay both 25 percent VAT and an additional tax on purchase. Buyers don't have to pay neither of those taxes if they buy an electric car. The singer of the group A-ha, Morten Harket, bought an electrical car in 1989 and refused to pay road tolls and ignored all the subsequent fines. That got a lot of attention, and Norway ended up having very affordable electrical cars compared to gas fueled cars. Norway is one of Tesla's main market.
How is Norway handling the increased use of the electric grid? I ask because Elon noted the US power grid needed to double output to handle a full is transition
Very interesting. In Canada, it will take years to recoup the price difference for buying an electric car even with government incentives. 25% VAT + Extra tax seems to work.
It's a bit ironic that Norway is able to buy all those electric cars because of all that oil money they make. Production of electric cars still costs more than that of fossil fuel cars.
Other stuff is free/reduced toll on roads, lots of free charging, often cheaper parking on public spots, can use the bus lanes in heavy traffic (probably soon going away now that half the cars being electric would block the buses).
> There's a huge price difference between electric cars and gas fueled cars here in Norway. Gas fueled car buyers have to pay both 25 percent VAT and an additional tax on purchase. Buyers don't have to pay neither of those taxes if they buy an electric car.
You're talking about a tax difference, not a price difference. We have the same taxes here in Denmark and our EV sales aren't anywhere near Norway's level. Probably because the actual prices end up being roughly equal, but the EV usually has lower range and takes longer to fill up compared to the equally-priced gasoline car.
Would be interesting to eventually hear Elon Musk's thoughts on Norway's role in Tesla's success. We were a very big market for them in 2013-2018, one might suspect critical.
He was an oil expert who met a Norwegian au-pair in London, they got together, married, had a sick kid so they decided to move to Norway, and because he had the whole day before he could take the train from Oslo to her hometown, he decided to visit the Ministry of Industry to get leads on oil jobs...
Norway's management of their oil reserves, or more specifically, the profits made from their oil reserves[0], is another lesson in running a country that Australia has failed[1] at even recognizing despite its vast mineral wealth and therefore applicability to future economic stability and strength.
That was a great read, thanks. I loved that they highlighted the role of a proper regulatory body as a key factor in the success of the oil industry in Norway.
It will be interesting if there comes a point where ICE vehicles are such a small minority of all vehicles, that supporting infrastructure (petrol stations, traditional mechanics, oil change services, etc) starts to collapse and disappear.
There may still be some infrastructure for special use cases like long haul trucking or industrial vehicles, but it might become untenable for the average consumer to own an ICE vehicle, just like it was painfully difficult to own an EV before charging stations became widespread.
When that happens, it could further accelerate the decommissioning of old vehicles.
Well it will happen eventually if countries go 100% electric, but I doubt it will affect the average consumer for a long time.
Fuel stations make most of their profits from non-fuel items (in my country, fuel stations sell some of the best coffee), and people will still need those when commuting or travelling. In Norway some fuel stations have started to convert pumps to EV chargers [0], however there isn't really much cost needed to keep a couple of fuel pumps around. Petrol can last a few months in tanks, and diesel can last up to a year.
People are still going to be using petrol for motorbikes and gardening equipment for a long time, and diesel is going to be used by trucks and construction machinery for even longer.
Yeah, and this should be a huge incentive for Governments to implement rebates and things to encourage more EVs. Our Federal Government in Australia is very strongly captured by lobbyists for all sorts of multinational companies, and some of the big ones are the oil & gas industry, so there's little movement here, but when you really think about it, having the sovereign capacity to fuel your vehicle fleet instead of relying on foreign oil (and increasingly in Australia, foreign refinement of that foreign oil) is a massive advantage.
Doesn't seem to become reality yet, Norway is really an exception here, their great wealth helps kickstart adoption massively.
> before charging stations became widespread.
They still aren't and there are no solutions for infrastructure and growth is still severely lacking and disappointingly slow. There is also no solution for people without a dedicated parking spot, which is especially common in cities.
How much of Boeing's aircraft fleet on which you worked is powered by those same fossil fuels?
Hypocritical facile criticism is hypocritically facile.
What's notable about Norway is that back in 1968, as the country was first becoming aware of its oil wealth through the newly-realised North Sea deposits (shared with the UK), the country had the foresight to tap the advice of an Iraqi ex-pat who advised the country to invest its oil funds for national growth, infrasturcture, and sustainability, and not squander it in corruption and gratuitous expenditures as so many other countries had and would.
The consequence is that we can now face the ironic but heartening fact that, yes, an oil-producing and exporting country is now positioned as amongst the more prepared for a post-fossil-fuel economy and civilisation.
If you find yourself in a lifeboat with limited supplies and rations, it's not unwise to make use of those rations. It is unwise to squander those rations for purposes other than reaching safety. And it's extraordinarily unwise to criticise those who are using those rations to achieve a safer state.
How much oil is needed to produce a single electric vehicle? What I am getting at is we will need oil extraction for a long time. While we can move away from burning it for heat, we still need it for the production of most plastics. This doesn't even begin to touch on oil's use in the extraction process of all the other metals used in car production.
We also need oil for road building. I don't see that changing anytime either. After all, asphalt production produces far fewer greenhouse gasses than cement. Concrete roads have their place but the vast majority of road miles will be made with asphalt for the near future.
As a Norwegian I totally agree with you. It is not just unethical, but stupid to invest so much in searching for new old fields. When demand for oil drops, Norway could have a Kodak moment.
Stopping it would be useless, it'd just increase production from oil wells of other countries. They could invest that money into accelerating green technology.
I've not owned a car for many years, always get trains and always try live in places where it's fine to walk or cycle. Inner cities, now in a rural village where I'm close to most amenities.
Recently I went on a road trip my partner (who really wanted to go), the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how stupid of an activity it was given what we know about our future if we stay on the current trajectory. While driving I was looking around at hundreds of thousands of other people doing the same thing and just got me down.
The idea of hundreds of millions of machines driving around emitting carbon dioxide and other pollutants is just so stupid it's hard to imagine we collectively accepted the idea in the first place.
It's really hard to believe that none of the externalitiez are factored into the absolutely insane cost of climate change.
However, I guess what I really wanted to say by writing this comment is, at least there is some hope :)
Scandinavia in general takes global warming more seriously than most other countries on the planet. And so this isn't strange at all. The whole of Europe is amping up alternatives to petrol- and diesel-based transportation, from e-bikes, cargo e-bikes, e-scooters to Teslas and electric Porsches (Taycan), and anything inbetween.
Their tax structure on vehicles is such that a loaded Tesla costs about the same as a Civic - the taxes (that are exempt on EVs) are quite massive on new cars.
Norway is wealthy thanks to selling fossil fuels. Norwegians feel guilty about that, but not guilty enough to stop selling them.
This is essentially performative environmentalism from them. Still, it will help other countries by throwing up unforeseen problems in all-electric ground transportation, and some solutions.
One way to avoid the resource curse is to use the bounty of the resource to develop diversified dependencies/capabilities for a future when that resource runs out or is devalued.
What a weird forecast, this is like saying "Bitcoin will hit $100k in 3 months." by looking at the price graph. Since people will still be allowed to buy such cars so far, I doubt 100% will ever be reached...
I still cant help but think about how wasteful cars are.
We basically have these giant energy hungry machines who just sit idle and take up space 95% of the time, and when they are utilized, it's mostly for a single passenger with almost zero luggage.
Pretty misleading title IMHO - from the 3rd para of the article:
"In the first eight months of 2021, vehicles without any type of electrification – battery electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid, hybrid – made up less than 10 per cent of (9.66 per cent) new car sales"
So by 'electric', they mean what are commonly referred to as 'electrified' vehicles, and by ICE, they are actually referring to pure gas/diesel cars. I have news for you - hybrids still burn gas!
> seven out of every eight cars bought and sold in Norway a used car. The NAF’s numbers show that of the 357,176 ownership registration changes so far in 2021, electric vehicles only accounted for 12 per cent.
And their definition of electric cars includes hybrids (whereas I think most people interpret it to mean fully electric). So they're obviously doing great but the vast majority of the vehicles in Norway are still ICE only.
Either people here don't like the truth or they can't be bothered to refute your claims. I don't see how electric can be the way forward. Cars are certainly no fun anymore.
Does anyone have a pointer to studies on the effects of electric vehicles in the used car market?
I ask because the lifespan of current batteries seems to be around 8 years (going by manufacturers' warranties), and the battery pack amounts to approximately 30% of the price of the car. So people buying an used electric car will likely face a large maintenance cost after a while.
That's off. A typical new EV gets ~250 miles of real world range on a full charge and has a battery with very similar chemistry[1] to what you have in your phone. So over a putative 200k mile lifetime, it's going to see about 800 cycles (2e5/250) of battery usage.
800 cycles is about what a typical mobile phone sees in two years, after which most are seeing some moderate degradation (70% of new condition is fairly typical) but are still quite usable. And in fact a car spends much more of its time being recharged well before reaching full discharge (where consumer electronics runs dead a lot), so it would be expected to do somewhat better.
It's not really a problem, basically.
[1] Though we're seeing an increasing number of vehicles delivered with LiFePO4 cells. This chemistry has somewhat lower energy density and higher internal resistance, but has the advantage of an estimaged hundreds of thousands of cycles lifetime. Those will never wear out until long after the mechanical parts are dust.
People tend to thing EV batteries are a binary thing, they are either working or broken. This is not how it goes.
An EV battery loses capacity faster in the beginning, slower later on. The falloff is perfectly predictable and easily estimated. You can check the health of a battery pack with a free app and a $10 OBD2 reader when buying one.
Yes, the maximum range will be lower than it was new, but it's up to the buyer if that is something that bothers them.
Compare this to the process of buying an old car. There's no way to know what kind of crap oil the previous owner has put in. You can't tell what shape the engine is in without actually opening it. The gearbox might just decide to break one day, the clutch might be on its last legs and the pistons might just come up for air some sunny summer day to enjoy the weather.
The only way to check for faults is relying on educated guesses (bring a friend who knows the specific type of car or take it to a shop for evaluation).
The difference between an ICE and EV is that ICE needs money frequently (oil changes, belts and chains and whatever wear down), an EV has That One Big Repair coming up at some point. And the price of batteries is steadily going down.
For example you can get a 3rd party battery for a Nissan Leaf _today_ that's 30% larger than the one that was in it originally. Just think what we can do in 2030.
Like changing a broken automatic transmission is a cheap thing.
That happened to a friend of mine, who was quoted around 50k NOK (~6k USD) of a car he bought used for twice that. Fortunately for him, it turned out there was one week left of the 5-year "new car" warranty so he didn't have to pay after all, but that was sheer luck.
There are a handful of independent shops that can repair a battery for much less than full replacement cost. I think that will get better as EVs become more common.
I’ve seen a stat that most cars only last 10 years in the US. If that’s because we crash or destroy them than the problem is almost non-existent. I own a 25 year old truck but they aren’t very common, so I assume that’s just anecdotal. I’m also not sure if that stat included trucks. I can’t find it to reference it.
Unless they programmed it to go bad as soon as the warranty expires I wouldn’t be so worried about it. The Tesla model S is about 8 years old now for the earliest models and I don’t think I’ve heard about them going bad.
I think that would cause them to drop by ~70% over 8 years, at least for normal to high mileage examples. I'm not sure if this is actually any worse than what would be typical for an ICE vehicle, though?
It's good that Norway may hit 100% electric EV. But with ~20% of their economy based on oil and gas production, it's hard not to think of it being funded largely by exporting pollution elsewhere.
There has been a similar big bump in the uk (to 17% not 100 but still...). How much of this is that a lot of legacy companies can't produce anything because they can't get chips?
thomasfl|4 years ago
ostenning|4 years ago
mfer|4 years ago
tkbeili|4 years ago
neverminder|4 years ago
matsemann|4 years ago
runeks|4 years ago
You're talking about a tax difference, not a price difference. We have the same taxes here in Denmark and our EV sales aren't anywhere near Norway's level. Probably because the actual prices end up being roughly equal, but the EV usually has lower range and takes longer to fill up compared to the equally-priced gasoline car.
iddan|4 years ago
mikewave|4 years ago
tclancy|4 years ago
marvin|4 years ago
fortuna86|4 years ago
This is also because they are a small, very rich country and cannot be used as a comparison to others.
bellyfullofbac|4 years ago
He was an oil expert who met a Norwegian au-pair in London, they got together, married, had a sick kid so they decided to move to Norway, and because he had the whole day before he could take the train from Oslo to her hometown, he decided to visit the Ministry of Industry to get leads on oil jobs...
BLKNSLVR|4 years ago
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
[1]: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/july/1435672800/ric...
jezzzabell|4 years ago
dredmorbius|4 years ago
anonporridge|4 years ago
There may still be some infrastructure for special use cases like long haul trucking or industrial vehicles, but it might become untenable for the average consumer to own an ICE vehicle, just like it was painfully difficult to own an EV before charging stations became widespread.
When that happens, it could further accelerate the decommissioning of old vehicles.
fy20|4 years ago
Fuel stations make most of their profits from non-fuel items (in my country, fuel stations sell some of the best coffee), and people will still need those when commuting or travelling. In Norway some fuel stations have started to convert pumps to EV chargers [0], however there isn't really much cost needed to keep a couple of fuel pumps around. Petrol can last a few months in tanks, and diesel can last up to a year.
People are still going to be using petrol for motorbikes and gardening equipment for a long time, and diesel is going to be used by trucks and construction machinery for even longer.
[0] https://insideevs.com/news/532464/fuel-stations-norway-fast-...
doublesocket|4 years ago
stephen_g|4 years ago
raxxorrax|4 years ago
> before charging stations became widespread.
They still aren't and there are no solutions for infrastructure and growth is still severely lacking and disappointingly slow. There is also no solution for people without a dedicated parking spot, which is especially common in cities.
WalterBright|4 years ago
thatwasunusual|4 years ago
To be precise, it's 14%, down from 26% in 2008.[0]
[0] https://e24.no/norsk-oekonomi/i/dOXzd1/norge-er-mindre-oljea...
dtech|4 years ago
dredmorbius|4 years ago
Hypocritical facile criticism is hypocritically facile.
What's notable about Norway is that back in 1968, as the country was first becoming aware of its oil wealth through the newly-realised North Sea deposits (shared with the UK), the country had the foresight to tap the advice of an Iraqi ex-pat who advised the country to invest its oil funds for national growth, infrasturcture, and sustainability, and not squander it in corruption and gratuitous expenditures as so many other countries had and would.
That story is now in the HN queue:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878010
The consequence is that we can now face the ironic but heartening fact that, yes, an oil-producing and exporting country is now positioned as amongst the more prepared for a post-fossil-fuel economy and civilisation.
If you find yourself in a lifeboat with limited supplies and rations, it's not unwise to make use of those rations. It is unwise to squander those rations for purposes other than reaching safety. And it's extraordinarily unwise to criticise those who are using those rations to achieve a safer state.
takk309|4 years ago
We also need oil for road building. I don't see that changing anytime either. After all, asphalt production produces far fewer greenhouse gasses than cement. Concrete roads have their place but the vast majority of road miles will be made with asphalt for the near future.
thomasfl|4 years ago
belltaco|4 years ago
mcdonje|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
tdeck|4 years ago
bamboozled|4 years ago
Recently I went on a road trip my partner (who really wanted to go), the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how stupid of an activity it was given what we know about our future if we stay on the current trajectory. While driving I was looking around at hundreds of thousands of other people doing the same thing and just got me down.
The idea of hundreds of millions of machines driving around emitting carbon dioxide and other pollutants is just so stupid it's hard to imagine we collectively accepted the idea in the first place.
It's really hard to believe that none of the externalitiez are factored into the absolutely insane cost of climate change.
However, I guess what I really wanted to say by writing this comment is, at least there is some hope :)
tannhaeuser|4 years ago
FourthProtocol|4 years ago
Syonyk|4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N... has extensive details, but they've got a set of incentives that exceedingly favor BEVs.
tuatoru|4 years ago
This is essentially performative environmentalism from them. Still, it will help other countries by throwing up unforeseen problems in all-electric ground transportation, and some solutions.
tobinfricke|4 years ago
They do have huge crude oil reserves, but do they have any refining capability?
dogma1138|4 years ago
digikata|4 years ago
Unbeliever69|4 years ago
mensetmanusman|4 years ago
shkkmo|4 years ago
kmonsen|4 years ago
bellyfullofbac|4 years ago
oleganza|4 years ago
riazrizvi|4 years ago
I think they have just become the first country to unlock this tech IRL Civ.
mupuff1234|4 years ago
djrogers|4 years ago
So by 'electric', they mean what are commonly referred to as 'electrified' vehicles, and by ICE, they are actually referring to pure gas/diesel cars. I have news for you - hybrids still burn gas!
overkill28|4 years ago
> seven out of every eight cars bought and sold in Norway a used car. The NAF’s numbers show that of the 357,176 ownership registration changes so far in 2021, electric vehicles only accounted for 12 per cent.
And their definition of electric cars includes hybrids (whereas I think most people interpret it to mean fully electric). So they're obviously doing great but the vast majority of the vehicles in Norway are still ICE only.
FridayoLeary|4 years ago
andrenth|4 years ago
I ask because the lifespan of current batteries seems to be around 8 years (going by manufacturers' warranties), and the battery pack amounts to approximately 30% of the price of the car. So people buying an used electric car will likely face a large maintenance cost after a while.
ajross|4 years ago
800 cycles is about what a typical mobile phone sees in two years, after which most are seeing some moderate degradation (70% of new condition is fairly typical) but are still quite usable. And in fact a car spends much more of its time being recharged well before reaching full discharge (where consumer electronics runs dead a lot), so it would be expected to do somewhat better.
It's not really a problem, basically.
[1] Though we're seeing an increasing number of vehicles delivered with LiFePO4 cells. This chemistry has somewhat lower energy density and higher internal resistance, but has the advantage of an estimaged hundreds of thousands of cycles lifetime. Those will never wear out until long after the mechanical parts are dust.
theshrike79|4 years ago
An EV battery loses capacity faster in the beginning, slower later on. The falloff is perfectly predictable and easily estimated. You can check the health of a battery pack with a free app and a $10 OBD2 reader when buying one.
Yes, the maximum range will be lower than it was new, but it's up to the buyer if that is something that bothers them.
Compare this to the process of buying an old car. There's no way to know what kind of crap oil the previous owner has put in. You can't tell what shape the engine is in without actually opening it. The gearbox might just decide to break one day, the clutch might be on its last legs and the pistons might just come up for air some sunny summer day to enjoy the weather.
The only way to check for faults is relying on educated guesses (bring a friend who knows the specific type of car or take it to a shop for evaluation).
The difference between an ICE and EV is that ICE needs money frequently (oil changes, belts and chains and whatever wear down), an EV has That One Big Repair coming up at some point. And the price of batteries is steadily going down.
For example you can get a 3rd party battery for a Nissan Leaf _today_ that's 30% larger than the one that was in it originally. Just think what we can do in 2030.
magicalhippo|4 years ago
That happened to a friend of mine, who was quoted around 50k NOK (~6k USD) of a car he bought used for twice that. Fortunately for him, it turned out there was one week left of the 5-year "new car" warranty so he didn't have to pay after all, but that was sheer luck.
The_Beta|4 years ago
https://insideevs.com/news/405885/tesla-model-s-battery-afte...
https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep...
https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-ba...
jdofaz|4 years ago
codazoda|4 years ago
Swenrekcah|4 years ago
_ea1k|4 years ago
andreer|4 years ago
[deleted]
lonelyasacloud|4 years ago
spaetzleesser|4 years ago
guerby|4 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpLm0uuVgA
"When will we have 100% EV adoption ? Norway was NOT fast, compared to what is coming." BestInTESLA
flerp|4 years ago
pstrateman|4 years ago
Comparing anything they do with your own country is a mistake.
findthewords|4 years ago
LatteLazy|4 years ago
noselasd|4 years ago
yunohn|4 years ago
Refer: https://www.ft.com/content/8574bd97-86e2-4665-9192-93dfde877...