Tesla takes lead again as Norway reports 8 out of 10 sales are electric

Norway, which has a target to sell electric cars only by 2025, has hit another milestone in sales in June with nearly 8 out of 10 private car buyers choosing electric.

And leading the mob, once again, is the Tesla Model 3, which had briefly taken a backseat in late 2020 to the Volkswagen ID.3 and the Audi e-tron.

In June, 20,392 new passenger cars were registered in Norway – roughly the same number of battery-electric and plug-in hybrids combined sold in Australia for the entire 2020-2021 financial year.

This is a new record for Norway, and means that 82.7% of its total sales were plug-in electric (including both battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles).

“These are fantastic figures, which show that it is possible to achieve the goal of only selling zero-emission cars in 2025,” said Christina Bu, general secretary of the Norwegian Electric Car Association.

Significantly,  64.6% of total sales were all-electric, up 20.7 points from June last year, and one in five cars registered in June were a new model of electric car not available in 2020, according to the Norwegian Electric Car Association.

Of all battery-electric sales, almost 3,200 were new Model 3, and one-third of these were the Standard Range Plus variants. This is the third-best sales figure ever for Tesla, beaten only by the “insane” delivery record in March 2019 of 5,315 cars after it was first introduced, and 4,232 cars in December last year.

Out of the top 20 cars sold in the month, 12 were electric including the Tesla Model 3. The Ford Mustang Mach-e claimed second place with 1,289 sold in June and the Volkswagen ID.4 claimed fifth place.

In a rare statement from Tesla staff, senior communications manager Even Sandvold Roland said: “The selection of family-friendly electric cars continues to increase, but Model 3 is still Norwegian car buyers’ clear favourite,” according to Tek.no.

“So far this year, at least two Model 3s are registered for every single delivered electric car of comparable models from other brands. In other words, we see that the broader electric car offer provides a clear increase in interest in Tesla,” he said.

But the same cannot be said for the commercial market, says Bu, where EVs only account for 37.3% of total sales.

“Due to loopholes in car taxes, there are lower taxes on polluting cars for companies. The Government must fix this as soon as possible if we are to reach 100 per cent market share for electric cars and electric vans in just three and a half years,” Bu says.

“If we are to be on track for the 2025 goal, the electric car share must rise to well over 60 per cent this year. If we had been far past, it would not have been for the companies to reduce their share of electric cars considerably.”