In Norway, electric cars have almost completely replaced gasoline engines. The same thing is now happening in Denmark.Image: Shutterstock
Norway set the first incentives for e-mobility 30 years ago. The goal was to only allow electric cars by 2025. The Scandinavians have almost achieved this. In 2026, combustion engines will be phased out in a second Scandinavian country.
Amy Walker / t-online
In Norway, almost only purely electric cars were newly registered last year. The proportion of battery-powered cars rose to 96 percent in 2025 from 89 percent the previous year, data from the Norwegian road association OFV shows. In December the Stromer share was almost 98 percent.
The proportion of new diesel cars was one percent, while gasoline cars only made up 0.3 percent of new registrations. The remaining newly registered cars were hybrid cars.
The triumph of the electric car in Norway
Buyers have recently been increasingly buying electric cars because the government announced tax increases for electric cars in October 2026. So customers still wanted to benefit from tax discounts. Only electric cars costing less than 300,000 Norwegian kroner (around 24,000 francs) will remain exempt from VAT in 2026.
Manufacturers also increasingly delivered electric cars to Norway to meet demand. “We very quickly rerouted a number of cars that were not originally destined for Norway in order to get them here more quickly,” Ford Norway managing director Per Gunnar Berg told Reuters.
Tesla was the best-selling car brand in Norway for the fifth year in a row, with a market share of 19.1 percent. This was followed by Volkswagen with 13.3 percent and Volvo with 7.8 percent. In addition, the market share of cars produced in China rose to 13.7 percent from 10.4 percent in the previous year. At the top was carmaker BYD, which more than doubled the number of cars it sold in the Scandinavian country.
For the first time, more cars are running on electricity than on diesel
2025 was also the year in which the share of electric cars in the total car fleet in Norway exceeded that of diesel cars for the first time. Passenger cars with electric drives made up the largest share of 33 percent on Norwegian roads, while around 31 percent had diesel engines and a good 23 percent had gasoline engines. Hybrid models made up the rest
This is how Norway managed to phase out combustion engines
The oil-producing country Norway’s rapid switch to battery-powered vehicles has several reasons: Change is driven by a system of incentives and pressures. Electric cars in Norway were exempt from import tax as early as 1990, and this relief was valid until 2023. Since then, a reduced tax rate has still applied to electric cars. From 2001 onwards, electric vehicles were exempt from VAT, which massively reduced the purchase price.
Other incentives include exemption from tolls from 1997, use of bus lanes and exemption from additional costs on ferries. The charging infrastructure has also been continuously expanded: since 2017, for example, renters have had the right to a charging station in front of their residential building.
Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian Electric Car Association, explained that it was not just about tax relief, but also about the “stick”. Combustion companies would be forced out of business by high taxes.
The Norwegians’ next goal is that heavy-duty vehicles should also be emission-free by 2030. In addition to electric trucks, biogas vehicles are also conceivable.
Other countries follow Norway
Denmark is likely to be the next country to completely transform into an electric car nation. In 2025, 86.1 percent of newly registered vehicles (private purchases) were fully electric e-cars. Towards the end of the year, the Stromer share rose to over 90 percent.
In Switzerland in 2025, only 22.8 percent of all new registrations were electric cars.