Driving in EV-Friendly Norway is Like Looking Into Our Future:
Traveling through Scandinavia feels like visiting the future in a lot of ways. OK, it's a future with a lot more open space and a lot less cultural diversity than what the real future holds, but a spin through Norway is a pretty interesting trip just the same. Wandering around Oslo, you're struck by stunning architecture at every turn and statues that not only highlight public squares but sprout from the very sea in unexpected spots.
But, being a transportation nerd, it was the means of mobility that really struck me. For one thing, bikes and cars and scooters all seem to coexist in Oslo more peacefully than just about anywhere else on the planet. Buses are easy to ride, with tickets purchased from your phone in an instant avoiding any awkward exchanges with drivers.
And then there are the EVs. So. Many. EVs. An amazing number of the things festoon the roads in Norway, enough to constantly surprise and delight me, despite this being my third trip to the city. Even in just the past few years, battery-powered motoring in Norway has really gone mainstream.
How mainstream? In March this year, 16,238 passenger cars were registered in Norway. Of those, 13,983 were battery-electric vehicles. That's an amazing 86% of all cars registered that month. Meanwhile in the US, according to the Argonne National Laboratory, sales of light-duty vehicles with plugs (including hybrids) made up just 5.85% of the market in March. That was nearly a 40% increase over the previous year, but still floundering in the single digits.
Why the disparity? Is Norway just a utopia of forward-thinking EV zealots? Not exactly. Where state and federal governments in the US have engaged in a haphazard collection of half-assed, confusing incentives to spur EV adoption, scattering a middling collection of carrots here and there over the years, the Norwegian government has instead chosen the biggest of sticks: taxes. Want to buy a gas-powered machine? Be prepared for a painful whack.
Norwegians are expected to pay a 25% value-added tax, or VAT, on every purchase. This includes cars, which are also traditionally subjected to other import taxes and the like. I say "traditionally" because EVs have been exempt from those taxes for decades. How does this shake out? Well, let's take a BMW 320d sedan, with a 190-horsepower diesel engine. Per BMW's Norwegian site, that car costs 418,531 kroner without options, or $43,258. However, to actually take that car home, you're looking at a whopping 677,307 kroner after taxes, or $70,005.
Compare that to the BMW i4 M50, a far peppier and frankly nicer to drive machine with 536 hp. It starts at 600,220 kroner, or $62,037. And that's it, that's your out-the-door price. $8,000 saved for a far more engaging car -- and that's before we factor in the upwards of $8 per gallon Norwegians are paying for gas. Mind, they do pay more for electricity, too.
[...] The vast majority of chargers I saw were either next door to large filling stations or situated in parking lots of shopping plazas. So, not too dissimilar to what we see here in the US. Interestingly, though, Superchargers were often directly adjacent to chargers from other networks like Recharge or Ionity. In the US, it's rare to see the networks co-mingling like this, but then again Norway was one of the first countries added to the non-Tesla Supercharger pilot, so perhaps location-sharing like this should come as no surprise.
[...] But the situation is about to get even more interesting. Next year, Norway is set to reinstate a portion of VAT on some EVs at a scaling rate based on the cost of the vehicle. Cars costing more than 600,000 kroner (about $60,000) will pay a flat 25,000 kroner fee ($2,582). Spend more than 1,000,000 kroner (about $100,000), and you'll pay 12.5%. That's still substantially less than the traditional 25% VAT, but will it be enough to dampen EV enthusiasm in Norway?
Økland says that Norwegians are enthusiastic about EVs regardless of subsidies, especially as more cars at more prices are becoming available, even hitting the used car market. "EVs have become the new normal," he said, "and if you bought a new fossil car today, people would ask the big question: Why?"
(Score: 5, Informative) by srobert on Thursday September 01 2022, @09:45PM (3 children)
Driving around the U.S. is also like looking into our future. One of those dystopian futures like Mad Max.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday September 02 2022, @04:18AM (1 child)
Our future is a mix between Haiti and South Africa.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 02 2022, @12:38PM
More like Detroit. A couple gated communities that cost $1M to buy into, surrounded by miles of favella.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 02 2022, @01:23PM
Must visit West Texas/New Mexico/Nevada some parts of other states, probably as well could count. Like the Salt Flats of Utah.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2022, @09:46PM
" tickets purchased from your phone in an instant avoiding any awkward exchanges with drivers. "
Is he usually trying to barter sex for a ride? I feel sorry for him if buying something in person is too awkward.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:04PM (4 children)
In the same month approx 225k [stlouisfed.org] passenger cars were registered in the USA and the numbers are way down! Prior to 2015 that number was almost always over 500k. That's a lot of ICEs that need to be replaced. They're already struggling to meet demand.
I wonder how much of the declining car sales in the USA is due to people waiting on EVs to get cheaper. Note the downturn in 2015, or perhaps the data don't include heavy trucks and SUVs (sigh) which may have increased during the last several years.
At any rate, the main point is that it's not an apples to oranges comparison because we're talking about a relatively small country with a lot of hydro-electric power. [wikipedia.org]
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 02 2022, @01:52AM (1 child)
And even more so - oil. These massive resources are drivers for government spending and societal wealth. There doesn't seem to be a point to babbling about those wonderful Norwegian things, if one doesn't have those Norwegian resources to fund it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday September 02 2022, @10:37AM
Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are also very similar in what they give their citizens, and don't have the Norwegian oil reserves. And the US per capita income is approximately the same as Norway's ($66K or so), so we have enough money to live like Norwegians if we choose to.
Although when it comes to the real exemplars of what's possible with transit and bicycles, it's the Netherlands that really show what's possible.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Friday September 02 2022, @09:14AM
It's also a country where most things are fscking expensive, but people are prepared to pay those prices in exchange for getting good quality and it being the right thing.
A final problem with translating this to the US is that the Scandinvian countries, which are consistently rated the best in the world to live in [worldhappiness.report], all have Nordic Socialism as their government model, which at least 50% of the US would rather die than live with.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 02 2022, @03:06PM
I wish that were so, but it's the chip shortage and other supply chain disruptions. People who opposed coronavirus lockdowns warned of the massive ripple effects they would cause. This is one of those ripple effects.
And this ripple effect, suppressing auto sales as it has, has led to large layoffs in companies like Ford. That, in turn, produces many other ripple effects for suppliers and dealerships downstream. That means fewer tax-paying residents in those states in the Rust Belt, and that means lower state tax revenue and less and less money for poverty relief.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:04PM (1 child)
Norway has a population of 5.379 million people. If there are 16,238 passenger cars, that means there is one car per 331 people.
For comparison, there are 329.5 million people in the US, and 105,135,300 registered cars (+ 159,147,338 trucks). So, one car per 3 people or 4 cars/trucks per 5 people.
https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/car-ownership-statistics/#:~:text=FHWA)-,How%20many%20cars%20are%20in%20the%20US%3F,second%20before%20motorcycles%20and%20buses. [bankrate.com]
So, the numbers in the article just seem wrong to me. But if the numbers are correct, the story is not that Norway has so many electric cars. The story is that Norway has so few cars per capita.
(Score: 5, Informative) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:07PM
You know, as soon as I posted this, I saw that the numbers quoted in the article were monthly registrations, not total registrations. Sorry!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:53PM
With the guv saying in 13 years we'll all be electric...
When the current grid can't support the electric we have now, otherwise why would guv ask us to not charge our cars?
Meanwhile, the guv is paying buckoo bux to keep the biggest electricity producer running for another 5 years.
That would be a nuke plant son. yep, nookleare energy. Most evil thing this state has ever seen. See also: San Onofre. Known to us Sandy Eggins since the 70s as the monument to Dolly Parton as we made our way to Disneyland or 6 Flags Magic Mountain.
Sure would be nice if this state could take it's rose colored glasses off for a few minutes and see what a shitshow they're asking for.....
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2022, @10:47AM
The government is telling EV owners Note to recharge their cars during a big travel holiday weekend because the power grid can’t handle the load.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Friday September 02 2022, @12:37PM (3 children)
Another way to put it is they're a market failure and the only reason anyone owns one is massive government control and government interference causing market bias. Which also puts the ICE engines as a conspicuous consumption desirable good, whereas fancy electric cars like the Tesla used to be the aspirational luxury. Its basically coding into law that EVs are shit and their only hope is authoritarian Big Brother.
Ironically, I like EVs, but thanks fondue-people for F-ing them over (sarcasm)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday September 02 2022, @12:57PM (1 child)
I am so grateful I am not in the market for a new car.
The new ICE cars are full of technocrap.
The electric ones don't have the infrastructure nor battery technology for a viable product.
Adding more charging stations will fix this as surely as adding more spigots will fix our water shortage.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 02 2022, @03:22PM
Car buyers choose what to buy based on that technocrap. They want complete interoperability with their iPhones. They want the whiz-bang creature comforts. The car manufacturers are only delivering what the market has told them they want.
That's 90% incorrect. For daily driving it's 100% incorrect, because the infrastructure required to charge your car is called "your house." The range on most EVs out there exceeds what >90% of drivers need on a daily basis.
Where you are partially correct is that there are some regions where fast-charging sites are limited or non-existent, and charging times become impractical for certain types of trips. The High Line [wikipedia.org] across the Upper Midwest, for example, has an uncross-able gap in North Dakota. Also, if you are doing great distances on a road trip (say, 14 hour days), adding recharging times on top of that pushes drivers past the pain point.
Adding more charging stations will partially address the aforementioned challenges in regions with poor fast-charging infrastructure. But the additional charging time required for long trips will, frankly, remain a challenge. (If you typically drive 8-10 hours per day on your long trips, then an extra hour or two in travel time is additive because it forces you to take the regular breaks that Triple-A has always recommended anyway, but doing more than that is untenable.)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday September 02 2022, @04:16PM
Aren't the fondue-people the Swiss, not the Norwegians?
It's a bit like accusing people from North Carolina of being gumbo-people.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday September 02 2022, @04:30PM (1 child)
One of the things that the Norwegians get right is the provision of more than one fast (50 kW) charger at charging points (there are exceptions) which means you don't have to worry so much about whether the charging point will be working when you get there.
In addition, they put charging points at motorway junctions with smaller roads, which means that they are accessible to travellers going in both directions. In Denmark, you find single chargers at motorway rest areas, which means you can turn up, and find the charger is not working and need to drive some distance to the next, meaning you need to keep more range in reserve, and you can be beside a not-working charger and see a working one across the central reservation without being able to get to it. That roll out was partially funded by the EU.
It is getting easier to just turn up and charge. Most charging networks now allow ad hoc charging, either by SMS or by phone and credit card, so it is still not as easy as buying fossil fuel. In the past, according to some report, you might need a dozen RFID keys or phone apps to ensure you could pay at all the chargers you might need. It remains cheaper to use the app or RFID key.
The charging point market is weird, and I'd love to see a good economic analysis of it, because from a customer point of view, some strange choices are made.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2022, @08:36PM
I've been driving for almost 50 years now, and I've never had to worry about whether I would be able to fuel my vehicle. But, I've never had an electric vehicle.