The automobile market of Norway enjoyed a strong rebound last month as new passenger car sales returned to growth, following six months of year-over-year declines. Norway is currently having the highest share of plug-in and electric cars in Europe.
According to fresh stats, the plug-in car segment noted a slight growth in sales after six months of noticeable declines. In October 2022, a total of 12,558 new cars were sold or registered. The figure represents a year-over-year increase of 8.5 per cent, and brought the year-to-date (YTD) overall sales to 115,319. While the monthly sales represent a notable growth, YTD sales represents a decline of 18 per cent.
Sales of all-electric cars (BEVs) jumped 20 per cent year-over-year, but sales of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) continued to collapse. Some 10,853 new passenger plug-in electric cars were sold in the month under review, which is 5 per cent higher than the figure recoded in the corresponding month of 2021. Nevertheless, the market share of plug-in cars slipped from 89.3 per cent to 86.4 per cent.
The gasoline, diesel and non-rechargeable hybrid cars were obviously in the minority with 13.6 per cent of market share last month.
The plug-in segment could do better, but PHEVs dragged the segment’s growth down. Last month, PHEV sales decreased 49 per cent.
Plug-in hybrid sales kept on decreasing because of reduced tax incentives (CO2 emission component). It may be noted here that the Norwegian government had long been offering attractive tax incentives on the purchase of new EVs as part of its efforts to accelerate buyers from conventional fossil fuel-guzzling vehicles to zero emission-EVs. However, those incentives were reduced earlier this year.
Luckily, BEV sales grew 20 per cent year-over-year, with their market share expanding from 70.1 per cent in October 2021 to 77.5 per cent in same month of this year. More specifically, a total of 9,727 BEVs and 1,126 PHEVs were sold during the month under review. Thus, total plug-in sales settled at 10,853 units, up 5 per cent at 86.4 per cent market share. In the first ten months of 2022, more than 101,000 new passenger plug-in cars (including 89,658 BEVs and 11,450 PHEVs) were sold in Norway. The total sales for current year are expected to end below last year’s level. For reference, in the twelve months of last year, a total of 151,917 new passenger plug-in electric cars were registered in Norway, up 44 per cent over 2020 at market share of 86.2 per cent.