Almost all new cars sold in Norway last year were fully electric, according to official registration data published Friday. It puts the Nordic country within touching distance of effectively erasing gasoline and diesel cars from its new car market. “2025 has been a very special car year,” Geir Inge Stokke, director of the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council, said in a statement.
Tax incentives apply to all EVs. Not just Teslas. The fact that the company openly supports antidemocratic and anti-European policies, has lead to a decline in sales in most of Europe. The fact that Norwegians still buy Teslas at the same rate as before means that they are choosing to support these American policies. I don’t care wether it’s fascist or not, but it’s certainly opposed to a rules-based international order (which small countries like Norway are reliant on for their independence), it’s against democratic principles like free elections and separation of powers, and it’s against your own economic interests.
Of course tax incentives apply to all EVs. I don’t think my point is coming quite across here. These aren’t the tax incentives you’re likely used to.
In the US, tax incentives for EVs amount to you getting a $3k or something like that discount on your electric car. Electric cars are more expensive to manufacture, so the incentive roughly cancels this out, so people who wanted to buy an electric car can afford to do so instead of buying a comparable ICE vehicle for roughly the same price.
This is not how Norwegian tax incentives for EVs work. Norway has a tax on combustion engines. The bigger the engine, the higher the tax. EVs do not have combustion engines, so this tax does not apply to them. The result of this tax structure was that ten years ago, a Tesla Model S was the price of a VW Golf in Norway. That was while people still bought Golfs. It’s hard to compare now because everyone buys EVs.
In every country there are assholes. Some vehicles appeal more to assholes. While there certainly are assholes driving a Prius, you’re more likely to see them in a Hellcat, an F1 Raptor or some huge diesel truck. If you wanted to buy one of those in Norway, you’d have to sell one of your mansions. If you don’t want to sell a mansion, or don’t have multiple mansion money, you buy a Tesla Model S or X. In most other countries assholes drive a variety of cars. The asshole market in Norway is 100% dominated by Tesla, and assholes don’t mind that Elon is a nazi.
If you want to compare with other countries, you’d get more meaningful results if you took another country’s data, substituted all performance ICE cars with Teslas, and then compared the results.
This isn’t the only reason. I listed a bunch of other contributing factors in my original comment. I forgot to mention the extensive Tesla supercharger network in Norway, but that probably also plays a role. I’m pretty sure other vehicles can also use those chargers, but it’s probably less convenient.
I live in Norway. I’m well aware of how the tax incentives work.
The plurality of Norwegian new car buyers are choosing to support Trump’s policies monetarily by buying Teslas. They are aware of the political positions of the company and they’re still choosing to buy the cars. In my opinion, none of your excuses can justify this.
I’m not making excuses, I’m trying to explain the behavior. Understanding the reason for the behavior is step 1 in changing the behavior.
There is some reason which is resulting in Norwegians still buying Teslas. Similar countries, like Sweden, are not buying Teslas. What’s different in Norway? It’s very obviously not that they’re all uninformed, and it’s not that they’re all fascist. There has to be some other reasons which result in Norwegians choosing to give money to Elon.
Not everything is black and white. I don’t want to give money to Nestlé, but I also need to eat. I think Intuit is a terrible company, but TurboTax is also the most feasible way for me to do my taxes, so I hold my nose and give money to them. There’s nuance to everything. I’m curious what’s tipping the scales for Tesla specifically in Norway and not other places, and wondering how that might be changed.