Norway Electric Car Sales Grow 71% In 2015
Originally published on EV Obsession.
The electric vehicle market in Norway grew around 71% in 2015 as compared to 2014 — with deliveries for the year totaling ~34,300 for the year; as compared to ~20,100 in 2014. The new figures come from EV-Volumes, an EV sales database and consultancy now partnering with EV Obsession and CleanTechnica.
The new figures show that Norway was the 4th-biggest electric vehicle (EV) market in the world in 2015 — behind only China, the US, and the Netherlands. The “EV market” in this case obviously relates to both all-electric vehicles and to plug-in hybrids (PHEV).
Despite being surpassed in 2015 by the Netherlands, with regard to overall sales, Norway remained the top EV market in the world with regard to market share (the portion of the overall auto market represented by EVs). The portion of the country’s overall auto market held by EVs is currently (in 2015) around 18.7%. This figure represents significant growth for the country’s EV market — as the portion held by EVs in 2014 was 11.5%.
EV-Volumes provides more info:
Quarter 4 brought a strong increase by 95% over 2014, with 9,100 registrations during the last 3 months. December was somewhat below expectations in terms of plug-in share (16.5%) in a very strong overall market of 17,543 passenger cars & LCVs, which was 15% higher than 2014. The 2015 total light vehicle market increased by 6% over 2014.
Is the tipping point reached? Going by the rules for diffusion of innovation (Rogers), mass market adoption starts when the first 15–18% of a given sector have bought the idea. By that measure, Norway has just reached the tipping point. With tax incentives kept as generous as they are, Norway can enter the next phase of plug-in growth.
Following the introduction of higher tax savings on PHEV, their share in the mix has more than doubled to 23% in 2015; in Q4 it was as high as 30%, lifted by a variety of new PHEV models for MY 2016, high Mitsubishi Outlander sales and an extraordinarily weak quarter for Nissan Leaf. Sales of pure EVs increased by 8,000 units (+44%), PHEVs gained 6,200 units (+365%) during the year.
The assumed reason for the drop in Nissan LEAF sales was a shortage of the new 30 kilowatt-hour (kWh) version of the popular EV model — leading many potential buyers to wait for broader availability.
Image Credits: EV-Volumes
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