Electromobility in Norway: The trend is towards third and fourth cars

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Electric car at the charging station

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Nowhere is the switch to electric cars happening as quickly as in Norway. In the first few months of this year, nine out of ten newly registered cars in the country were purely electric vehicles. According to analyses, there could be more electric cars on Norwegian roads than petrol cars by the end of this year.

A study now shows that electric cars are still very unevenly distributed among the Norwegian population. More than half of households with battery-powered vehicles owned three or more such vehicles. This suggests that the ownership of electric cars is concentrated among the wealthier, write the study authors in the specialist magazine “Communications Earth & Environment”.

This is also supported by the fact that electric cars have only come onto the market in large numbers in the last few years and, as (more expensive) new cars, initially appeal to wealthy buyers. Only gradually do they reach poorer sections of the population in large numbers as used cars. Older vehicles tend to be common among low earners - even in Norway these are still predominantly combustion engines.

Almost one in ten households gave up on electric cars

For the study, three researchers from Norway and the Netherlands compared how the proportion of households with at least one electric car changed between 2005 and 2022 - compared to those that only drive combustion engines. 34 percent of households with electric cars recently owned three or four, and almost 14 percent owned five or more such cars. In addition, almost one in ten households that once owned a battery-powered vehicle gave it up during the period.

It is known from other studies that electric cars are often used as second vehicles, at least initially, before the owners have gained confidence in the drive technology and the charging station network. In Norway, it is also becoming increasingly common for households to own three or four cars, whether electric or combustion engined. Nevertheless, according to the researchers, the data shows that electric car owners are, on average, richer and earn more.

The scientists also found that the owners of electric cars are, on average, more educated than those of combustion engines. The proportion of households with electric cars in which at least one person has a university education was around 25 percentage points higher each year.

The purchase of electric cars is generously supported in Norway thanks to high income from the oil and gas industry. Although the government abolished a VAT exemption for particularly expensive electric cars, the remaining government subsidies amounted to the equivalent of more than 3.7 billion euros last year alone.

msk/Reuters