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Electric car sales keep climbing and climbing in Norway. In 2013, many of us were shocked to learn that electric cars were account [sic] for about 10–15% of new car sales in the country. We are now well aware of the fact that the Norway electric vehicle market is in a league of its own, and just yesterday I wrote about the breakdown of June electric car sales in the picturesque country. But I skipped one important note, the percentage of new car sales that were electric car sales.
Jeff Cobb reminded me of this important matter when he published an article yesterday highlighting that 22.9% of new cars in Norway are now plug-in electrified cars. And if you want some serious perspective here, catch this line: "Comprised of battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, if the same thing were to happen in the US on a percentage basis, it would have meant 1,943,177 new [Plugin Electric Vehicles] PEVs on American roads since January." We have 50,503 new PEVs on our roads since January, about 2.6% of that number....
It's still a small fraction of the total vehicle fleet in Norway, but it signals a shift in car buyer preferences. What percentage or absolute number of EV purchases constitutes a tipping point?
Editor's Note: It's worth noting that while Norway exports a fair amount of North and Berents Sea oil and gas products, their domestic production of electricity is primarily from hydro-electric schemes with thermal and wind schemes thrown into the mix as minor contributors. Reference with interesting stats in the tables here: Statistics Norway
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 18 2015, @03:11PM
It seems to me they could add in key benefits that really wouldn't cost them that much in order to encourage more people to move to EVs. For example, here in New York you can take the HOV lane as a sole occupant if you're driving an EV. The marginal cost to the polity of doing that is very low. California does better with its EV parking spots that are in prime position next to the handicapped spots in the lot. But again the incremental cost of mandating that is quite low. If they threw in other such measures like letting EVs drive in the bus lane, enter state parks for free, and generally make the driving experience for them "first class" it would motivate a lot of people.
But that's the icing on the cake. I've been driving my brother-in-law's BMW i3 around for a few months and putting it through its paces. The acceleration is great, smooth and totally silent, as is the braking. It's instantly reponsive, with no lag for gear shifts. And not having to visit a gas station ever feels quite liberating. Plug the thing in overnight and you're set; and doing that is not hard to remember as most of us have gotten used to doing that with our phones. No oil changes, no maintenance apart from windshield wiper fluid. It's a revelation. It makes it hard to go back to driving my own gas car. I've been talking to my brother-in-law about it as we go along, and also my younger brother who's an engineer at Ford and started driving a BMW i3 as well about 5 months ago, and we all agree that you can't go back to an ICE after getting used to the advantages of an EV.
Washington DC delenda est.