Norway has 200,000 EVs and its best seller is the Nissan Leaf

Scandinavian EV powerhouse Norway is celebrating a significant milestone: there are now just over 200,000 all-electric passenger cars on its roads, and one out of four of that number is a Nissan Leaf.

The next most popular EV models are the Volkwagen e-Golf, the BMW i3, followed by the Tesla Model S.

The figures were announced on the Norwegian Electric Car Association (Norsk Elbilforenig) website, accompanied by a number of illuminating graphs.

Out of the country’s 2.7 million-strong passenger car fleet, there were 200,192 electric cars and vans registered, making up a total 8.3 per cent of the total fleet at the close of 2018.

Most of that was electric cars (7.2 per cent) while electric vans made up 1.1 per cent of the entire fleet.

Almost another 100,000 passenger vehicles are plug-in hybrids.

The increase from the same time in 2017 is substantial. In December 2017, 141,951 private EVs were registered, meaning that the Scandinavian country saw an increase of 41 per cent in its electric car stock.

In addition to the electric car and van figures, over 3,000 electric motorbikes and mopeds were listed as registered, as well as just over 143 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and even 13 electric trucks.

Norway is widely regarded as a leader in electric vehicle uptake – while the volume of its EV sales is only a fifth of that in the USA (which now exceed 1 million total EVs on the road), it is substantial in light of the country’s much smaller population and size.

In October last year the Scandinavian country made history when it announced that, for the first time ever, half of all vehicles sold in one month (September 2018) were electric vehicles.

Norsk Elbilforenig states that its most dense region for electric vehicles is in the island municipality of Finnøy, Rogaland, where a quarter of cars on the road are electric.