- Norway’s share of electric vehicles will reach 95.9% in 2025, almost meeting its goal of no new gas-powered cars on the road.
- The electric car tax credit only covers cheaper models in 2026, and could change what cars people buy this year.
- Tesla remains the market share leader at 19.1% for the fifth year in a row, although Chinese automakers are gaining more ground.
Norway is far ahead of the rest of the world in its transition to electric cars.It’s almost complete. Electric vehicles accounted for just under 30% of all new cars purchased in the country a decade ago, and in 2025, it has nearly met its goal of adding no new gas vehicles to its roads.
Although Norway is not a member of the European Union, it has very close relations with the bloc, and in many ways acts as a de facto member. Although several EU countries have backed away from the bloc’s plan to end pure combustion sales by 2035 (and eventually) I got the ban postponedNorway continued to pursue this goal and achieved it almost a decade earlier than the rest of Europe was supposed to.
The country has published car sales figures for 2025, and they show that pure electric vehicles make up 95.9% of the total. Just like the rest of Europe, so was Norway Reducing incentives for electric carsbut it doesn’t seem to matter since most buyers still switched to electric last year. It used to offer VAT (Value Added Tax) exemptions for all electric cars, but then the price limit was periodically reduced.
In 2026, only electric cars costing less than $30,000 will still qualify for the exemption, meaning most models on sale will no longer qualify. In 2025, Tesla became the country’s most popular car brand for the fifth year in a row, with a market share of 19.1%, followed by Volkswagen and Volvo. Chinese automakers have increased their collective market share to 13.7%, up from 10.4% in 2024.
But it’s not just tax breaks that have spurred the popularity of electric vehicles in Norway. Increasingly heavy taxes were also imposed on combustion cars, making them uneconomical to purchase. The combination of high registration fees and high fuel taxes makes buying and operating a gas car more expensive than buying an electric car, so Norwegians are choosing the latter en masse.
The EV adoption rate of nearly 100% in 2025 exceeds the EU average of 17%. The Nordic countries lead Europe in adopting electric cars, with Denmark coming in second after Norway, with more than 50% of its new cars being electric, followed by Sweden with about 37%. The popularity of hybrid cars varies widely across Europe, but they account for 24.7% and 20.7% of all new car sales in Sweden and Finland, respectively, according to a report published by the British newspaper “Daily Mail”. European Environment Agency.
Norway has almost met its 2017 goal of fully transitioning to electric vehicles by 2025. Most of the combustion cars purchased in the country last year were specialized in specific roles for which no equivalent electric car was available. It will be interesting to see whether the upward trend of electric vehicle sales in Norway continues until 2026, even as the all-important VAT exemption only applies to cheaper electric vehicles and does not include the more popular electric models that people are already buying.
Reuters It suggests the exemption, which applies only at the current level, may boost sales of smaller, more affordable cars that buyers may not have previously considered. There is also an increasing number of Good little electric cars There are many European manufacturers to choose from, as well as very high priced Chinese models that qualify for the exemption, so 2026 could represent a shift in the volume of vehicles purchased in Norway.
