Oslo (AFP)
Norway became in 2020 the first country in the world where electric cars represented more than 50% of new annual registrations, according to figures from a specialized organization published on Tuesday.
According to the Road Traffic Information Council (OFV), electric vehicles had a market share of 54.3% last year against 42.4% a year earlier.
The four best-selling new models in the Nordic country - Audi e-tron, Tesla Model 3, Volkswagen ID.3 and Nissan Leaf - were all electrically powered.
The fifth - the Volkswagen Golf - has a plug-in version, but statistics do not distinguish between types of engine.
Electric car sales for December broke a new monthly record, at 66.7%, driven by the arrival of new models, the OFV figures show.
The largest producer of hydrocarbons in Western Europe, Norway is also a pioneer in electric mobility thanks to an extremely favorable tax policy.
Unlike diesel or gasoline cars which are very heavily taxed, clean cars are in particular exempt from almost any tax, which makes them competitive to purchase.
The Nordic country, where electricity is almost entirely of hydraulic origin, nurtures the ambition that all its new cars will be "zero emissions" from 2025.
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