Electric vehicles accounted for nearly half of all cars sold in 2019

Nearly half of new cars sold in Norway in the first six months of 2019 were fully electric, compared with just over a quarter at the same time last year.

In total, 48.4% of new cars sold between January and June 2019 were powered by fully electric engines, compared to 31.2% for the whole of 2018.

Sales of gasoline cars fell by nearly 30% over the same period, while the market share of hybrid cars also fell from 20% to around 11%.

Thanks to this development, Norway remains by far the world leader in electric car sales per capita, with Iceland ranking second at almost 30%.

Politicians from all walks of life have pledged in 2016 to ban all cars using fossil fuels in the middle of the next decade in Norway and have introduced tax breaks and other incentives for electric vehicles.

Norway offers electric car owners discounts on toll roads and tax exemptions on cars running on fossil fuels.

Policies have boosted sales of brands that produce all-electric cars, as opposed to hybrid models that have both an electric motor and a combustion engine.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), which includes the most widely sold plug-in hybrid vehicles to count electric cars, estimated that 46% of all cars sold in Norway in 2018 were electric, which which makes it the first country in the world in the adoption of electric cars. .

Iceland ranked second at around 17%; Sweden comes in third with around 8%. In the United States, during the same period, 2.4% of car sales were electric vehicles, falling to 2.1% in the United Kingdom.

According to the International Energy Agency, 2018 has been "another record year" for electric car sales. Sales rose 68% in 2018 worldwide.

China was the largest market with about one million sales of electric cars in 2018.

But while the trend confirms Norway's position as one of the world leaders in adopting green policies, fossil fuels are an essential part of the country's economy.

Revenues from oil and gas exports represent about half of all Norwegian exports and have made it one of the richest in the world.

In 2017, the country overtook Qatar and became the world's second largest exporter of natural gas behind Russia. Norway supplies about 25% of the EU's gas demand.

Almost all the oil and gas produced on the Norwegian shelf are exported.

In April 2019, the biggest party in the Norwegian parliament dealt a blow to the country's huge oil industry after withdrawing its support for exploratory drilling off the Lofoten Islands in the Arctic, considered a natural wonder.

The move came just days after the Norwegian government gave the go-ahead to its $ 1 billion oil fund – the world's largest sovereign wealth fund – to invest in unlisted renewable energy projects.

Billions should be spent on wind and solar projects.