"Electric cars have been especially popular in Norway because of generous subsidies, free parking, government-provided re-charging stations, the right to use express lanes on highways and exemptions from tolls."
Besides:
- Norway has the highest taxes anywhere on buying and using gas cars. Horsepower and weight is taxed heavily.
- Urban sprawl around the biggest cities has created some of Europe's worst traffic congestions. It's a huge benefit to be able to use the bus lane.
Teslas high market share in Norway is also a symptom of some of the challenges we face here in Norway.
- Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric, the same number in US is 0.1 percent.
- The number of electric cars on the Norwegian roads today is 7 000, and the total amount of cars is 2.4 million. The neighboring country Sweden has 4.4 million cars, but only 600 of those are electric.
- About 40 percent of those who own an electric car also own a gasoline car.
- The goal of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association is to have 100 000 electric cars in Norway within year 2020.
- The Norwegians have earlier tried to produce electric cars through the company Think Global. For the fourth time in twenty years, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
> - Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric
Even better, that number is already outdated - the article states that the Model S has a 5.1% market share already.
It should be noted though that the Norwegians can afford to be environmental - they make ridiculous amounts of money from their offshore oil fields. Also, they have plenty of cheap electricity from hydro.
A big reason for the Tesla Model S being the best selling car last month is that a lot of people have been on waiting lists for months to buy one, and they only started selling them in August. Not to say that it won't keep selling well with all the benefits specific to electric vehicles in Norway.
I believe this article is inaccurate. A lot of people preordered the Model S, and a lot of those were delivered and paid for (upfront payment excluded) in September, which caused the Model S to be positioned in the top of the chart.
I hope to see the Telsa become a big hit in Australia.
Right now I couldn't have one since my apartment complex wouldn't support charging - however if the government ran a subsidy program to retrofit complexes I would definitely look at buying one!
Me too, though given the stance the government has taken on climate change and investment into the future, it's unlikely such subsidies will be significant or fast coming.
And retrofitting apartments would be great, but again given the track record with the NBN rollout, you really have to ask how committed they are to infrastructure projects. Also brown/black outs happen during summer as the grid struggles to keep up with the increased demand. Adding EC to that? Yeesh.
Tangent: I'm all for EVs, but paradoxically they are really quiet - as in silent if they're coming up behind you. If you've ever been on the footpath, turned casually to cross the road only for a cyclist to rush past you out of nowhere it's really frightening like someone jumping out and yelling "boo". Can only imagine once we transition away from fossil fuels.
This is the direct result of what happens when similar specced petrol cars are just way more expensive (taxes) than electric cars.
So if any government wants to embrace the use of ecars, this is one way to do it! Governments of countries with a healthy car industry would be hesitant to do this though.
As a fan of Tesla I'm still skeptical whether tax incentives are the way to go - the reason is that I'm not yet convinced that battery powered cars are a sustainable way to replace all the petrol powered ones.
In general it seems to me that internalizing all costs of transport is the way to go. This would mean higher fuel costs, possibly slightly higher cost of electric vehicles and also higher cost of public transport. There should be a clear incentive for people to move as close as possible to where they work, or to work from home. Some incentives to steer the economy in that direction could be helpful at first, for example subsidizing company housing or directly subsidizing people to move close to their job (the higher amount, the closer the family moves), offsetting high rent in places with lots of work.
My assumption is, that Tesla gets a lot of "free" marketing because they're the only "real" electric car company for now.
I'm really happy for them, but i believe that as soon as Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi etc. can affort to make "cheap" but great electirc cars, nobody will talk about Tesla anymore.
In germany, for example, it's really expensive to own a car (insurance etc.) but it's even more expensive to drive one. You need to pay between 1,36 and 1,85 Euro per Liter (Cars have between 40-70 Liter tanks) and people _still_ don't buy electric cars.
My guess is, that many people trust those big companies and don't want to buy a expensive car from a company they never heard of. As soon as all those german companies have a good mass-product solution for electric motors, they can scale them from an Audi A1 to an Audi A7 and people will buy them instantly.
I'm old enough I remember how crappy American cars were (due to non-innovation/cheap gas) and how Asian manufactures ate them alive with cheap, efficient (for the time), dependable cars. Detroit is now bankrupt and it took 20years (70's to 90's) for the American manufactures to recover.
Many similarities today. Incumbent manufactures mostly ignored (or produced paltry efforts) electric. Only now after the threat is getting established are they responding.
All cars will be electric someday and all manufactures will have electric cars (or be out of business). But until then, there is room for a new player to emerge. Honda, Toyota, Nissan weren't known before the last automotive disruption either.
> I'm really happy for them, but i believe that as soon as Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi etc. can affort to make "cheap" but great electirc cars, nobody will talk about Tesla anymore.
People said the same thing about Google providing the first usable web search, and their dominance (and the Microsoft would eat their lunch when Redmond finally got around to it).
I feel the same way about Tesla - the Model S is merely a product that embodies the company's vision and skilled workforce. Tesla may not yet have a patent thicket, but they probably have key battery-specific patents as well.
They are busy disrupting the way cars are sold as well (mainly because, in order to succeed, they have to)… an area that sorely needs disruption.
All of this means that by the time the other manufacturers get around to building a Model S equivalent, Tesla will have both moved on to better product as well as entrenched their brand as the leader in the space (not to mention whatever lock-in that Supercharger stations produce).
Perhaps this will be diminished in Germany which prides itself on it's car manufacturers, but even Japan gave into the iPhone eventually.
That's the point I'm not sure. COnsidering the fact that the biggest innovation the big german manufacturers had in last couple of years were new assisstant systems, I highly doubt they are in any position to actually built usable electric cars. The notable exception being BMW. And even they are far behind Tesla for now and had to fight considerable internal resistance to get the i3 project running.
I highly assume they are ready for some tough times if they don't prepare for a changed market. Exports to the US and Asia won't save them forever. And once the infrastructure for EVs is in place it will become practical to drive EVs. I only hope for the German economy that car manufacturers learned the lessons from former German camera and TV set manufacturers.
I was in Oslo last May, saw my first Tesla Roadster... They tell me it's actually a pretty cheap car - or rather, all other cars are crazy expansive - because of taxes on internal combustion cars...
> One of those secondhand buyers, 27-years-old financial consultant Anders Langset, said a regular car with similar performance and engine size could have cost him up to 2 million crowns ($330,000) because of the punitive taxes Norway’s government levies on cars with big, gas-guzzling engines.
Wow, if that's correct, then good on both the government and people for trying to move in the direction of gasoline independence.
I guess in Canada and the US we are too intertwined with the car industry to do something similar.
Is it that people don't buy a lot of cars in Norway? Average income is significantly higher? Different income profile of car buyers specifically? Some kind of social effect, like prestige?
Due to the tax structure on electric vs gas cars in Norway, a similar performing gasoline powered car would cost you at least twice and probably more. For comparison $110000 will just about get you a middle of the line BMW 5 series, and something like entry level BMW M3 coupe will easily set you back in excess of $200000.
And that's before you take into consideration the annual savings due to high gas prices in Norway and no road tax on electric cars.
One of the main reasons is that ordinary cars are heavily taxed, while electric cars are not taxed at all. This makes a Model S cheaper than most BMW or Mercedeses for example.
Add to this that electricity is cheap, while fuel is expensive. Also, Norway's wealth is relatively evenly distributed while at the same time the GDP is high. All these reasons makes it affordable for a lot of people to Buy a Tesla Model S.
While I have seen a few Model S on the road, I can't commute to job without passing a quite a few Nissan Leaf. Those have been sold in large numbers here (3% of all cars sold first half of 2013).
Take this with a grain of salt as I read it as a blog comment, but it's been argued that this is only a temporary thing, because of a pile up of orders for a long time and now a sudden delivery.
Interesting. One fellow Norwegian client was assuring me - the country is rich, but people don't have money. I understood this as one of the perils of socialism.
Norway is not a socalistic country, that's just absurd (unless you are on the right wing of US politics - where everything left of for-profit healthcare is socialism/marxism/communism).
Our cost of living is often absurdly high though, and the increased wages can't completely make up the difference (it's AWESOME for travel though). Therefore we can't afford as much "stuff" as Americans can, but I think it's worth it due to increased quality of life the Norwegian system brings.
I was under a similiar impression but even with high taxes and cost of living Norwegians have an estimated individual net worth $350K, third in the world, on par with Australia and about $150K less than the Swiss.[1]
It still seems bizarre to me that somebody would buy a car that is a third or even a fifth of their net worth, though.
But Norway also has almost 55K millionaires (net worth).[2]
People do have money. The median salary is on the order of ~$75,000/year. But everyting is so expensive that you don't get the class division that can be observed in the UK and US. (It is also a part of our culture to not have distinct social classes).
[+] [-] sbrekken|12 years ago|reply
- No annual road tax and virtually no sales tax
- You're allowed to drive in the bus lane which is huge for suburb communters.
- Free communal parking
- Free passage through tolls and ferries
- Free charging at communal charging stations (they're everywhere in Oslo)
[+] [-] akavel|12 years ago|reply
"Electric cars have been especially popular in Norway because of generous subsidies, free parking, government-provided re-charging stations, the right to use express lanes on highways and exemptions from tolls."
or wasn't that fragment there earlier?
[+] [-] thomasfl|12 years ago|reply
Teslas high market share in Norway is also a symptom of some of the challenges we face here in Norway.
[+] [-] jccooper|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SuperChihuahua|12 years ago|reply
- Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric, the same number in US is 0.1 percent.
- The number of electric cars on the Norwegian roads today is 7 000, and the total amount of cars is 2.4 million. The neighboring country Sweden has 4.4 million cars, but only 600 of those are electric.
- About 40 percent of those who own an electric car also own a gasoline car.
- The goal of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association is to have 100 000 electric cars in Norway within year 2020.
- The Norwegians have earlier tried to produce electric cars through the company Think Global. For the fourth time in twenty years, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
[+] [-] svantana|12 years ago|reply
Even better, that number is already outdated - the article states that the Model S has a 5.1% market share already.
It should be noted though that the Norwegians can afford to be environmental - they make ridiculous amounts of money from their offshore oil fields. Also, they have plenty of cheap electricity from hydro.
[+] [-] capisce|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hanspeide|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cstrat|12 years ago|reply
Right now I couldn't have one since my apartment complex wouldn't support charging - however if the government ran a subsidy program to retrofit complexes I would definitely look at buying one!
[+] [-] redact207|12 years ago|reply
And retrofitting apartments would be great, but again given the track record with the NBN rollout, you really have to ask how committed they are to infrastructure projects. Also brown/black outs happen during summer as the grid struggles to keep up with the increased demand. Adding EC to that? Yeesh.
Tangent: I'm all for EVs, but paradoxically they are really quiet - as in silent if they're coming up behind you. If you've ever been on the footpath, turned casually to cross the road only for a cyclist to rush past you out of nowhere it's really frightening like someone jumping out and yelling "boo". Can only imagine once we transition away from fossil fuels.
[+] [-] cynix|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayoone|12 years ago|reply
So if any government wants to embrace the use of ecars, this is one way to do it! Governments of countries with a healthy car industry would be hesitant to do this though.
[+] [-] m_mueller|12 years ago|reply
In general it seems to me that internalizing all costs of transport is the way to go. This would mean higher fuel costs, possibly slightly higher cost of electric vehicles and also higher cost of public transport. There should be a clear incentive for people to move as close as possible to where they work, or to work from home. Some incentives to steer the economy in that direction could be helpful at first, for example subsidizing company housing or directly subsidizing people to move close to their job (the higher amount, the closer the family moves), offsetting high rent in places with lots of work.
[+] [-] antr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axx|12 years ago|reply
I'm really happy for them, but i believe that as soon as Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi etc. can affort to make "cheap" but great electirc cars, nobody will talk about Tesla anymore.
In germany, for example, it's really expensive to own a car (insurance etc.) but it's even more expensive to drive one. You need to pay between 1,36 and 1,85 Euro per Liter (Cars have between 40-70 Liter tanks) and people _still_ don't buy electric cars.
My guess is, that many people trust those big companies and don't want to buy a expensive car from a company they never heard of. As soon as all those german companies have a good mass-product solution for electric motors, they can scale them from an Audi A1 to an Audi A7 and people will buy them instantly.
[+] [-] jgreen10|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njharman|12 years ago|reply
Many similarities today. Incumbent manufactures mostly ignored (or produced paltry efforts) electric. Only now after the threat is getting established are they responding.
All cars will be electric someday and all manufactures will have electric cars (or be out of business). But until then, there is room for a new player to emerge. Honda, Toyota, Nissan weren't known before the last automotive disruption either.
[+] [-] r00fus|12 years ago|reply
People said the same thing about Google providing the first usable web search, and their dominance (and the Microsoft would eat their lunch when Redmond finally got around to it).
I feel the same way about Tesla - the Model S is merely a product that embodies the company's vision and skilled workforce. Tesla may not yet have a patent thicket, but they probably have key battery-specific patents as well.
They are busy disrupting the way cars are sold as well (mainly because, in order to succeed, they have to)… an area that sorely needs disruption.
All of this means that by the time the other manufacturers get around to building a Model S equivalent, Tesla will have both moved on to better product as well as entrenched their brand as the leader in the space (not to mention whatever lock-in that Supercharger stations produce).
Perhaps this will be diminished in Germany which prides itself on it's car manufacturers, but even Japan gave into the iPhone eventually.
[+] [-] hef19898|12 years ago|reply
I highly assume they are ready for some tough times if they don't prepare for a changed market. Exports to the US and Asia won't save them forever. And once the infrastructure for EVs is in place it will become practical to drive EVs. I only hope for the German economy that car manufacturers learned the lessons from former German camera and TV set manufacturers.
[+] [-] greenyoda|12 years ago|reply
https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tesla+norway
[+] [-] matponta|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TobbenTM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chollida1|12 years ago|reply
Wow, if that's correct, then good on both the government and people for trying to move in the direction of gasoline independence.
I guess in Canada and the US we are too intertwined with the car industry to do something similar.
[+] [-] timc3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeddi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taralx|12 years ago|reply
Is it that people don't buy a lot of cars in Norway? Average income is significantly higher? Different income profile of car buyers specifically? Some kind of social effect, like prestige?
[+] [-] dagw|12 years ago|reply
And that's before you take into consideration the annual savings due to high gas prices in Norway and no road tax on electric cars.
[+] [-] glesica|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cremnob|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alephnil|12 years ago|reply
Add to this that electricity is cheap, while fuel is expensive. Also, Norway's wealth is relatively evenly distributed while at the same time the GDP is high. All these reasons makes it affordable for a lot of people to Buy a Tesla Model S.
While I have seen a few Model S on the road, I can't commute to job without passing a quite a few Nissan Leaf. Those have been sold in large numbers here (3% of all cars sold first half of 2013).
[+] [-] Gravityloss|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frogpelt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristofferR|12 years ago|reply
Our cost of living is often absurdly high though, and the increased wages can't completely make up the difference (it's AWESOME for travel though). Therefore we can't afford as much "stuff" as Americans can, but I think it's worth it due to increased quality of life the Norwegian system brings.
[+] [-] lumberjack|12 years ago|reply
It still seems bizarre to me that somebody would buy a car that is a third or even a fifth of their net worth, though.
But Norway also has almost 55K millionaires (net worth).[2]
1. http://www.businessnewsnorway.com/2011/10/norwegians-are-the...
2. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2007/jul/13/business.intern...
[+] [-] marvin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maggit|12 years ago|reply
"Socialism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism) isn't really applicable.
[+] [-] dooptroop|12 years ago|reply