More electric cars than petrol cars on the road: A country breaks important barrier

(EFAHRER.com)In Norway, electric cars will overtake petrol cars on the road this year.

A country in northern Europe has achieved what Germany is currently far from achieving. For the first time, the number of petrol cars there has fallen so much that electric cars now have the upper hand.

In 2017, the number of diesel engines in Norway reached its peak. With around 1.3 million vehicles, diesel-powered cars make up almost half (47 percent) of the entire car fleet in the Scandinavian country. However, a lot has changed in just seven years. Diesel vehicles now only account for 35 percent. This means that this type of drive is still the most common on the country’s roads, but the trend seems to be consolidated. As an analysis by the Norwegian industry magazine Bilbransje24 based on data from the Norwegian Road Association OFV shows, electric cars reached an important milestone in September.

E-cars are the leaders in new registrations

In July of this year, Norway reached a new record for new registrations of electric cars. Almost 92 percent of all newly registered vehicles were electric cars. If you include hybrids, the share of electric drives was a whopping 97 percent. Germany only reached a value of 12.9 percent in the same period.

Since the first electric car was registered in Norway in 2011, the number of new registrations has continued to rise. In September, electric cars will overtake petrol cars on the road. At the beginning of the month, 751,450 electric cars and 755,244 petrol cars were registered. Since around 10,000 electric cars are sold in Norway every month, the number of electric cars is likely to exceed that of petrol cars this month as well. In July, only 45 combustion engines were newly registered. Both types of drive now account for around 26 percent of the car fleet in Norway. The number of petrol cars has therefore more than halved since 2010. At that time, the total of 1.6 million vehicles still made up 64.4 percent of the fleet. The share of plug-in hybrids has also increased by seven percent.