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 GungnirSniper on Saturday July 18 2015, @05:57AM
I'm not sure which is worse: That we published a story with "Electroical Vechiles" in the summary, or that it's Friday night and I'm being pedantic on the Internet?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 18 2015, @02:48PM
[Plugin Electric Vechiles] [sic]
Better now? :-)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by juggs on Sunday July 19 2015, @01:11AM
Not really. The text in the square brackets is an editor addition (it does not appear in the quoted source), hence does not qualify for a [sic] (sic erat scriptum) which would denote a typo, spelling or grammatical mistake in the quoted material.
Square brackets (do they have a more correct name?) are customarily used to denote an addition to a quoted text - typically done for clarification, as in this case, explaining an otherwise obscure three letter acronym.
I'll patch it up now :)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday July 19 2015, @01:53AM
That's from an editor. I typically copy & paste from articles and sometimes photo captions and the like come out in square brackets. I thought it such a case, thus the [sic].
As I put together submissions I do very frequently see mispellings and homophones turn up, even from sites like BBC. Proofreading is a lost art.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kramulous on Saturday July 18 2015, @09:09AM
I mean it. Really. Good on them.
I wish that kind of political thinking was a little more contagious and would infect our shitty policy makers.
Looking after the people. Investing the wealth of the people for the people. Making sure that no one individual claims rights to their oil exports and that it is shared instead.
It is almost the polar opposite here in my country. I wonder if it is a numbers game? The bigger you are the more your politicians care about only themselves and the less about their constituents.
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Saturday July 18 2015, @12:47PM
Basic explanation: Norway has high income, but huge taxes and cost of living c.f. US. Now compare:
USA: $7500 one-off subsidy on purchase of car, plus what you save on (cheap) US fuel vs.
Norway: estimated $8,000 per year [gas2.org] savings from vehicle tax, free parking, free ferries (go look at a map of Norway!) and free use of toll roads. I'm assuming this includes savings on highly-taxed Norwegian fuel, and the freedom from 25% sales tax on purchase.
See also here [cleantechnica.com] and here [wikipedia.org].
...and as per the editors note, Norwegian has green hydroelectricity coming out of its ears, so there's a very unambiguous incentive for the government to offer all these incentives to switch to EVs, both from the environmental and energy self-sufficiency point of view.
(Score: 2) by subs on Saturday July 18 2015, @01:28PM
Norway: estimated $8,000 per year savings from vehicle tax, free parking, free ferries (go look at a map of Norway!) and free use of toll roads. I'm assuming this includes savings on highly-taxed Norwegian fuel, and the freedom from 25% sales tax on purchase.
Had a look at the cleantechnica article and noticed that cheap fuel is third on the list of major incentives of what motivated people and even so only accounts for 15%. Pretty much the rest are subsidies of one form or another. In other words, the adoption rate is incredibly artificially inflated. I bet I could also get the adoption rate for any technology pretty high if I were giving it away at near free. The government will sooner or later need to make a decision: keep the incentives and accept a cut in tax revenues, or remove the incentives and accept a slowing the adoption rate. In fact, it seems to me that the adoption rate of EVs is directly proportional to the amount of subsidy the government is willing to throw in. In Norway, where subsidies are fat, adoption is high. In California, where subsidies are still pretty good, it's lower, but still, it's there. In the place where I live, subsidies for EVs are nearly non-existent and I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild. That, combined with the lack of infrastructure was the reason why I got a hybrid (would have gotten a PHEV if they weren't so outrageously expensive and I had some place to charge it).
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 18 2015, @02:56PM
Presumably the subsidies would sunset after some percentage of the existing vehicle fleet had been reached.
If 1 in 4 new car purchases in Norway is an EV or PHEV, how long before social acceptance of EVs is achieved? Human beings generally have a herd mentality when it comes to change. Malcolm Gladwell took a pretty good stab at trying to codify it. I don't know that he achieved a mathematical model with predictive power, but his "tipping point" term stuck. Network theory is fascinating; I do hope that somewhere somebody leaks the key findings from all the Big Data that's being collected. It would revolutionize sociology.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Saturday July 18 2015, @09:36PM
If 1 in 4 new car purchases in Norway is an EV or PHEV, how long before social acceptance of EVs is achieved?
I don't think irrational social acceptance of EVs is an issue - the issues are price and practicality.
When the base price of an EV is 50% more than a comparable petrol car, subsidies help a lot - directly in the short term and by bootstrapping demand in the longer term (higher volumes = lower prices).
Practicality is mainly down to the range issue. I don't think battery powered EVs are ever going to match petrol for carefree, long-distance trips, but increased range and better infrastructure will help, and subsidies will increase demand for those. Also, subsidies can sweeten the pill - If I could save $8000/year through subsidies, I'd have less qualms about maybe needing to hire a petrol car for the holidays!
However, the tipping point is rapidly going to be followed by a sticking point: once EVs start to become mainstream, some of the tax breaks will have to disappear, and new problems will arise: the EVs in the bus/carpool lane will starting to cause congestion; the toll road and ferries will start to lose serious revenue and there's now a queue for those 2 charger bays... Those aren't insurmountable problems, but someone needs to plan for them.
(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.
(Score: 2) by caseih on Saturday July 18 2015, @03:04PM
I've always felt that EVs wouldn't go anywhere in the northern climates do to the cold. Batteries and cold do not mix well. Norway has some of the most northern, cold communities anywhere. It will be interesting to learn about their experience with EVs in the cold and techniques for dealing with it. Do they have to keep them plugged in all the time to keep the batteries warm? How much is range reduced when it's -40? If they haven't figured it out already they soon will! I imagine EVs are mostly in the cities, and not out in the far-flung fjord communities that are scattered throughout Norway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hankwang on Saturday July 18 2015, @03:29PM
"Norwaye has some of the most northern, cold communities anywhere."
Most Northern, yes. Most cold, I doubt, unless you count places lke Svalbard. Most of Norway has a surprisingly temperate climate due to the Gulf stream. For example Tromsø which is pretty far north: "The lowest temperature ever recorded is −18.4 °C (−1.1 °F), in February 1966". The avarage in February is around -4 C.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troms%C3%B8 [wikipedia.org]
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2015, @06:22PM
I'm glad someone pointed this out. I live many hundreds of miles south latitude of the most northern reaches of Norway. Today it is going to be 33C (92F) and last winter the lowest temp was around -34C (-30F). Where I live still does not have ubiquitous block heater plugins everywhere. For that you must go to even colder regions where even antifreeze does freeze. At -30 that isn't so much a problem but checking it with a gauge is a good idea before cold events.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Saturday July 18 2015, @10:30PM
You'd be surprised. The Model S doesn't seem to have any particular problem with the cold. There are tons of them in Norway now. Just gobs.
According to Bjørn Nyland, a Norwegian Tesla owner who has dozens of videos dedicated to various aspects of his Tesla Model S experiences, he found initially that the Model S lost just 20% of range through the winter. This is compared to the Nissan LEAF which typically loses about 50% of range in cold weather. The Model S has a very well-designed battery temperature management system.
Linky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsLMlozXjhk [youtube.com]
However, later on he made another video (can't find the exact one) where he noted that after a year or so he is only observing about 10% range loss in winter versus summer. The difference may be mostly due to the fact that he quickly got into the habit of preheating the car from his phone every morning before using it. That increases range and allows the vehicle to use regenerative braking right away, without expending energy to heat up the battery pack.
His channel is oddly entertaining if you are at all interested in the specifics of owning a Tesla and driving it around in a cold, snowy, mountainous country. Funny guy, and he takes a lot of time laying out facts and figures about power consumption and explaining various pros and cons of owning the Model S. His videos are often surprisingly well-produced.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ