Oil-Rich Norway on Course for 100% BEV Sales by Year End

As battery-electric vehicles wildly outsell internal-combustion-engine vehicles in Norway, Chinese products now take a near 10% share of the market in just five years' trading.

Data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) published this week reveals nine-in-10 new vehicles sold last year were BEVs.

At the same time, tariff-free imports of Chinese brands such as BYD, Xpeng and MG, the latter part of Chinese state-owned SAIC Motor, increased to 8.8% last year, up from 5.1% in 2023 and 4.1% in 2021, according to Reuters calculations based on OFV data on the top 20 car brands sold.

Of course, Norway is a very special case because, while it earns most of its export revenues from selling fossil fuels, 97% of its domestic energy use comes from renewable sources, mainly hydroelectricity plus some wind and solar followed by a small portion of bio- and waste fuels.

Its exports in 2022 saw an income of $154 billion from petroleum gas and a further $58.9 billion from crude petroleum, making up 74.7% of its total $285 billion in export revenues.

Environmental critics would say the government is guilty of a NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) approach to energy use, sending its "dirty" fossil fuels to other markets while penalizing its domestic users of ICE vehicles with high taxes and exempting BEVs from import and value-added taxes on top of other generous incentives to buyers.

BEVs now account for 88.9% of new cars sold in 2024, up from 82.4% in 2023, and the country is on target to force the sales of only new BEVs from the end of 2025.

Overall, Norway’s top-selling brands are Tesla, followed by Volkswagen and Toyota. Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian EV association, tells Reuters: “Norway will be the first country in the world to pretty much erase petrol and diesel engine cars from the new-car market.”

Norway has also concentrated much effort on BEV charging infrastructure, says Anders Kleve Svela, senior manager at Circle K, Norway's largest fuel retailer. He adds: “Within the next three years we will have at least as many charging stalls as we have pumps for fuel. In just a couple of years more than 50% of all the cars in Norway will be electric...We have to ramp up our charging parc according to that.”

However, there remain some pockets of BEV resistance primarily from vehicle-rental companies whose tourist customers still prefer to drive ICE-powered cars.