Just 45 petrol cars sold in Norway in July as EVs hit 92 per cent of sales

For many months, battery EV (BEV) sales in Norway have not grown. Occasionally, though, there are significant step changes in the monthly registration figures due to policy changes.

This July was one such month. Each month, the Norwegian Opplysningsrådet for Veitrafikken (OFV), which roughly translates to “Road Traffic Information Council”, publishes statistics on the registration of new vehicles in Norway.

Those of us who tend to watch the energy transition in real-time pay attention to these statistics each month. It gives us some clues about how the transition is likely to play out in other countries.

This July, full battery electric vehicles (BEVs) made up 91.9% of all newly registered vehicles, up from 81.7% in July 2023.

Hybrids and plug-in hybrids together made up another 4.8%, albeit down from 14% last year. PHEVs have lost considerable market share in Norway because, as reported by Cleantechnica, a registration tax exemption given for the additional weight of the electric drivetrain was removed in January 2024. PHEV sales have been declining ever since.

July was the lowest month I can recall for non-hybridised petrol car sales. Only 45 new vehicles were registered.

People in the Australian EV community often speculate as to who these residual petrol car buyers are in Norway. Are they people with niche requirements for which there are no practical BEV alternatives? Or are they just committed ICE drivers at the laggard end of the adoption S-curve with no interest in owning an EV?

The OFV generously shared the new petrol vehicle registrations with me. First, here is a table with the new registrations in July of quantity two or more. These account for 27 of the 45 in total.

The largest group of 10 Suzuki Swifts is a bit of a surprise. This suggests that there is still a gap in the market for very small passenger vehicles like the Swift. It’s also possible that there is some brand loyalty to Suzuki, and Suzuki has still not released an EV. Maybe they are Susuki employees!

The two ambulances from Nilsson Special Vehicles are modified Volvo XC90s. These are likely to be one example of a vehicle that is well suited to such modifications. Nilsson may be waiting before making the investment to change the base vehicle model, but moving to an EV platform does not seem insurmountable.

The 20 remaining vehicles were 20 different models that only sold one vehicle each. These include two different Aston Martin models, a Maserati, a Suzuki Ignis, a Suzuki Vitara, a Mazda CX-30 and a couple of amateur-built cars.

For the most part, these are high performance sports cars or high luxury vehicles for which the manufacturer is not (yet) providing an EV version. Some really high end, low volume manufacturers have shown little interest in electric vehicles, stating that their customers don’t want them.

I think the answer to this question is therefore mixed. There appears to be some opportunities to replace some of these very last petrol vehicles like the Suzuki Swift and Ignis, and the Mazda CX-30, particularly if Suzuki or Mazda chooses to supply an EV to these brand loyal customers.

To a large degree, though, it does seem like the very last of the petrol cars are indeed bought by drivers wanting high performance cars that go “vroom vroom real big”.

The author thanks OFV for providing the data used to write this article.