Norway’s electric car sales set new world record

Electric cars are being charged on a street in the Norwegian capital Oslo on April 30, 2019. Rich or not, young and old, hip urbanites and rural dwellers alike: Norwegians, including Crown Prince Haakon, are increasingly switching to electric cars. The choice is especially green in this country, where most of the electricity produced is environmentally-friendly, derived from hydro power. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)

Oslo, Norway — Electric car sales in Norway took a 94-percent share of the market in August — a new world record — statistics showed Monday, as sales in the rest of Europe stagnate.

Boosted by the Tesla Model Y, which accounted for 18.8 percent of sales, and to a lesser extent Hyundai’s Kona and Nissan’s Leaf, electric vehicles made up 94.3 percent of new car registrations, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said.

Norwegians bought 10,480 new EVs in August, bringing the total to 68,435 since the start of the year.

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Elsewhere in Europe high prices and insufficient infrastructure have hampered sales of EVs, whereas sales of hybrid models, which combine fossil fuel engines with electric batteries, have increased.

The Scandinavian country, a major oil and gas producer, has set a target to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2025, 10 years ahead of the EU goal.

The country offers generous tax benefits which make electric models competitively priced.

“No country in the world comes close to Norway in the electric car race,” OFV director Oyvind Solberg Thorsen said in a statement.

“If this trend continues, we will soon be on our way to achieving our goal of 100 percent zero-emission cars by 2025,” he said.

By comparison, electric cars represented 12.1 percent of new car sales in the EU in July, behind petrol cars at 33.4 percent, full hybrids at 32 percent and diesel cars at 12.6 percent, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.