China may be pumping out electric vehicles at an absurd clip, but when it comes to actual adoption rates, Norway is the clear global leader. After three decades of progressive policies promoting EVs and telling fossil fuel-powered vehicles to get lost, 88.9 percent of Norway’s new car sales in 2024 were electric.
In the city of Oslo, electric cars are the norm and gas-powered vehicles are an odd sight. Meanwhile, you’d have an easier time finding a unicorn than an electric car in many parts of the United States.
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Electric vehicle sales in Norway were so high some months that as many as 98 percent of new car sales were EVs. Compare that kind of growth to the United States where EV sales only went up 8 percent in 2024, which is only a tiny bit of an increase compared to 7.6 percent in 2023. The even sadder part is that 8 percent in 2024 represented a five-year high.
One thing that helps quite a bit is that Norway is not nearly as big of a nation as the United States, both in terms of population and mileage. Norway as a whole only has 5.5 million people. For comparison, the state of Florida alone had a population of 22.6 million as of 2023. In terms of land size, after doing some back-of-the-napkin math, you could probably fit around four Norways into Texas.
There are cultural reasons for Norway’s large-scale embrace of electric vehicles to be sure, but you can’t ignore the simple practicality of a tax break. Norwegian authorities started taxing gasoline and diesel engines more and more, to the point that gas-powered vehicles were significantly less economical than electric cars, which were exempt from taxes.
Norway is itself a major oil and gas producer, yet by the end of 2025, the nation aims for all of its new cars to be zero emission. The goal was nonbinding, so there’s no governmental body ensuring that they hit that milestone, but it looks like they’re going to hit it anyway. By the end of 2025, Norway might be the first nation to totally phase out the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles.
Norway is going keep the good times rolling well into the future with smart and practical policies, like eliminating import duties and enticing folks with perks like free parking for EVs, discounted tolls for EVs, and electronic vehicles getting access to bus lanes to help them speed through traffic.
The country has also established a massive network of 27,000 public charging stations that supply energy to a wide and diverse array of EV brands. As for where they get all the energy for this, Norway has an abundance of renewable hydroelectric power that accounts for 88 percent of its electricity production.
There are massive cultural differences between the United States and Norway that explain the discrepancy in EV adoption. But it probably helps to have a government that actually cares to promote them, make them more economically viable, and provide an infrastructure that supports them.
