Almost all new cars registered in Norway last year were fully electric, official data showed yesterday, headed by booming Tesla sales as the Nordic country cements its global lead in phasing out petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.
Oil-producing Norway’s rapid switch to battery-powered vehicles contrasts with the rest of Europe, where weak demand for EVs prompted the European Union last month to reverse its planned 2035 ban on internal combustion engine cars.
Driven by tax incentives, 95.9 per cent of all new cars registered in Norway in 2025 were EVs, with that number at almost 98pc in December. The annual figure was up from 88.9pc in 2024, Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) data showed.
A record 179,549 new cars were registered in Norway during the year, a 40pc increase from 2024, the OFV said.
Tesla was Norway’s top-selling car brand for a fifth consecutive year, with a 19.1pc market share, followed by Volkswagen at 13.3pc of registrations and Volvo Cars at 7.8pc.
Led by the mass-market crossover Model Y, Tesla sold 27,621 cars in Norway in 2025, more than any other automaker has sold in the country in a single year, overcoming a consumer backlash plaguing the brand in much of Europe over CEO Elon Musk’s support for far-right parties and his backing of US President Donald Trump.
Cars produced in China had a 13.7pc market share in Norway in 2025, up from 10.4pc the previous year, led by automaker BYD which more than doubled the number of cars it sold in the Nordic country.
Norway, which began taxing EVs in 2023, announced in October that it would add up to $5,000 in value-added tax per vehicle from January 1, 2026, sparking a rush among buyers and car firms to beat the 2025 year-end deadline.
“What we did very quickly was to redirect a number of cars that were not originally intended for Norway, to get them here faster,” Ford Norway’s Managing Director Per Gunnar Berg told Reuters.
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