A boat from America contributed to a sixfold increase in sales of Tesla.
Fresh figures from Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) shows that 15,321 new passenger cars were registered in Norway in March – of which 56 per cent were zero-emission cars.
This is far higher than the corresponding share in February, which was 47.5 per cent.
January and February were slow months, and I must admit that I was worried. Now in March we see that the proportion of electric cars is creeping upwards, but for the quarter as a whole we are below the average from last year, says Christina Bu in the Norwegian Electric Car Association to Nettavisen Økonomi.
With an electric car share of 52.8 per cent so far this year, electric car sales are just above the first quarter of 2020, where the share was 50.5 per cent. However, the share is lower than the average for 2020 as a whole, which was 54.3 per cent.
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Tesla Model 3 pulled up
OFV points out that a boat from America with a Tesla Model 3 contributed greatly to the high electric car sales. In March, 2,169 new Tesla Model 3s were sold – a sixfold increase from February, when only 334 were sold.
Tesla tops the registration statistics clearly ahead of Toyota (1,536), Volvo (1,438) and Volswagen (1,313). So far this year, 2,566 Tesla Model 3s have been sold in Norway.
– It is common for Tesla to deliver a lot at the end of each quarter. We saw this in the record month of December last year, and we will see it again in March this year, says Bu in the Electric Car Association.
While 73.1 per cent of all new cars bought by private individuals in the first quarter were electric cars, only 33.6 per cent of the cars in the commercial market were electric cars. Bu points out that petrol and diesel cars in the leasing market avoid a number of taxes, which makes the competition tough for electric cars.
– In the leasing market, there is in practice half VAT on petrol and diesel cars. Politicians must address this if we are to achieve the goal of one hundred percent emission-free new car sales in 2025, says Bu to Nettavisen Økonomi.
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Expecting close to 40 new electric car models this year
Bu believes that many Norwegians are now sitting on the fence before they decide to buy a new car.
– We expect a record launch of electric car models this year, with close to 40 new models launched this year. There are more than the models that run on petrol and diesel, as well as rechargeable hybrid, combined. New models appear all the time, so it promises very well.
If we take a closer look at sales in the various counties, it is in the Hordaland area – which is now part of Vestland county – where electric cars are most popular: 72.3 per cent of all new cars in Hordaland were electric cars in March.
This is followed by Oslo (64.1 per cent), Vestfold (59.3 per cent) and Rogaland (58.5 per cent).
The weakest interest was in Finnmark (28.1 per cent), Sogn og Fjordane (35 per cent) and Troms (39.9 per cent).
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