The ID.3. Source: Volkswagen
Plug-in electric vehicles accounted for eight in 10 vehicle sales in Norway in October, as sales of the new Volkswagen ID.3 continued to surge.
The ID.3 electric hatch, which the German car maker says will lead its plan to sell 90% electric vehicles in the Norwegian market in 2021, was five times more popular than the next best selling EV, MG’s ZS EV.
Volkswagen sold 2,475 ID.3 hatches in Norway in October, compared to the MG ZS EV’s 586 units – notable for Australia considering the Chinese-owned car maker has just introduced the ZS EV locally for the lowest price to date for any electric vehicle at $A40,990.
But there are worlds between Norway and Australia’s EV market, with the former country leading the globe on EV policy and the latter country still having none, at least federally.
With two decades of EV-focused incentives and policies now under its belt, Norway is well on its way to reaching a goal of 100% new vehicle sales to be electric by 2025.
In October, 61% of all new vehicle sales were battery electric (BEV), and 18% were plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs). José Pontes, who compiled the stats notes that while PHEV sales have remained at a constant in 2020 compared to 2019, all-electric sales are growing.
Conversely, petrol and diesel vehicles sales are now just a minor portion of the market.
“Looking at the fuels breakdown, if BEVs are up, everything else is down, and even PHEVs are now suffering from the blackhole effect of BEVs,” Pontes says.
Adding non-pluggable hybrid sales to the mix and the sales figures reach 88% electrified. The effect this is having on fuel sales is not going unnoticed, either.
Following the VW ID.3 and MG ZS EV are the Nissan Leaf, Hyundai Kona Electric and Audi e-Tron, which still sits as the best seller for 2020.
With Norway’s market starting to reach saturation, the market-disrupting Tesla Model 3 has not sat at the top of Norway sales since September 2019 (expect Tesla to see a resurgence once the Model Y reaches the European market however).
In terms of the BEV+PHEV leaderboard, Volkswagen’s e-Golf still claims second place after the Audi e-Tron.This is followed by the VW ID.3, Hyundai Kona Electric and Nissan Leaf.
Notably, the introduction of the Toyota RAV4 PHEV (the hybrid version of which topped October sales in Australia) is now displacing the longstanding Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.
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