Norway enthralled by electrified cars (85% market share)

In the past months, the Norwegian car market had a dip, and also the electrified cars suffered. Now the market is jumping up again, and the sales of EVs and hybrids now represent 85% of the entire car market.

In March 2021, buyers in Norway bought 8 624 new fully electric passenger cars. Besides, there were 4 379 new plug-in hybrids (PHEV). Norway’s most successful model (across all drive types) last month was the Tesla Model 3, with 2 169 new registrations.

Compared to March 2020, this is an increase in EV sales of 23,7%. New e-car registrations (19 159) are up 17,2% from the first quarter of 2020.

Full recovery

As the share of pure electric cars dived below half (47,5%) for February, some people already thought that the EV market was saturated and would continue to slip in Norway.

This is now contradicted with a market share for full EVs of 56%, compared to 53% in January and a whopping 66,7% in December last year.

And, of course, one has to add the plug-in hybrids to have a complete overview. 4 379 PHEVs joined the 8 624 BEVs in Norway in March. Thus, the PHEVs had a market share of 28.6% last month (in February, 31,6%).

Compared to March 2020, PHEVs were up 83%. In contrast, ‘normal’ hybrids declined by 2,1%. They only accounted for 865 new registrations, but their market share of 5,6% was still higher than that of diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles (4,7 and 4,8%, respectively).

Adding BEVs and PHEVs, March’s market share was a proud 84,8% (February: 79% and January: 82%). The market share of pure ICE vehicles was 9,5%, diesel and gasoline combined. For the first time, the market share of cars with internal combustion engines dropped below ten percent.

Tesla Model 3

That the EVs won market share and the PHEVs lost some is entirely due to the success of the Tesla Model 3 in March. It sold 2 169 times, while no other model reached four-digit figures, the Toyota RAV4 being second with 908 sales. This sudden jump makes the Tesla the best-sold car for the year already, before the Toyota.

The rest of the top ten shows the strong role of EVs: the VW ID.4 is already in third place (856), followed by the Volvo XC40 (791) vehicles, the Nissan Leaf (637), the Mercedes EQC (589), and the Audi e-tron (430), the Polestar 2 (396), BMW X1 (364) and MG ZS EV (362).

It’s a little difficult to compare the makes because the Norwegian statistics, unfortunately, don’t differentiate between ICE, hybrid, or fully electric. Last year the Audi e-tron was the bestselling car in Norway.

Nevertheless, seven of the ten best-selling models are only purely electric, while plug-in hybrids play an important role in the other three model series.