Every fifth car on road in this European country is now electric

With every fifth card on the roads of Norway now being electric, the country has reached a major milestone in terms of emission-free driving. The Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association (NEVA) estimates that it will take just under two years for battery-powered cars to reach 30% of total. The share rose to 20% from 1/10 in less than three years, as per its data.

It took almost 10 years for the country's electric car fleet to go from zero to 10 percent of the market - a level that was reached in March of 2020. It took less than three years for the share to then double to 20 percent, NEVA said.

The country's high uptake of electric vehicles is a result of a slew of incentives provided by the country's government including reduced taxes on new purchases, aimed at reaching a target that all new cars sold in 2025 are zero-emission vehicles. In 2020, the Nordic nation became the first country in the world to see electric cars overtake fossil models among new vehicles.

In the capital of Norway, the share of electric cars is now at 33.2%, while it still remains at 4.7% in Finnmark county in northern Norway, as per NEVA.

It is ironical that Norway, which is Western Europe's biggest oil and gas producer, aims for all its new cars to be “zero emission" - in other words, electric and hydrogen - by 2025. Electric cars now represent about 80 per cent of Norway's new car registrations, as an increasing number of models become available.

However, with the growing popularity of these cars, and the loss of income for the state, Norwegian authorities have started to roll back some of the benefits.