Norway is set to become the first country to fully transition to electric vehicles

[nogooduser@lemmy.world]

While other countries lag behind, Norway's success demonstrates the potential for widespread EV adoption.

Decades of incentives, including tax breaks and infrastructure investments, have driven this shift.

Basically, if your government really wants it and doesn’t give in to lobbying then they can do it.

It’s many years of concerted effort with successive administrations keeping up the commitment.

Our 2024 figure for % of new cars being electric was 19.6% in the UK so I’d be very surprised if we hit the 2030 target of 80% new cars sold being zero emission.

[oce@jlai.lu]

Geology and geography are also helping a lot.

Norway is also a very wealthy nation, which thanks to its huge oil and gas exports, has a sovereign wealth fund worth more than $1.7tn (£1.3tn). This means it can more easily afford big infrastructure-build projects, and absorb the loss of tax revenue from the sale of petrol and diesel cars and their fuel.

The country also has an abundance of renewable hydro electricity, which accounts for 88% of its production capacity. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo

[drunkenpirate@feddit.org]

Yepp, it’s odd to celebrate the milestone to emobility if one knows it’s paid all by carving carbon out of the earth. The goal of Emobility is to reduce carbon emissions - as far as I know.

[ironsoap@lemmy.one]

I'm not saying they aren't downplaying it, but it's also a population of 5.5 million of highly educated and high per capita income, which makes easier to implement. Small population and people who can afford it.

[9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works]

Norway: don't get high on your own supply...

[lnxtx@feddit.nl]

But did they stopped exporting oil and gas? ~/s~

[aa5b@lemmy.world]

Maybe but so far in the us, it’s not the large population or lack of affordability blocking EV adoption, as much as politics, conservative backlash, Facebook science, outrage culture. If we could put aside our toxicity, spite, narcissism, we could be pretty far down that road too

[vodka@lemm.ee]

But that's emissions outside of our environment so that's fine, no worries.

Please Europe keep buying our natural gas at record prices.

[n2burns@lemmy.ca]

Sure, but Norway also has decent active/public transit. So, if residents can't afford an EV, there's a good chance they just don't own a car at all, and can still get around okay.

[dubyakay@lemmy.ca]

Why the /s when it's clearly not sarcasm?

[ironsoap@lemmy.one]

As I'm here now, I can attest to the great public transit. However I will also say the large and dispirit nature of their population means the car will still likely rule. Yes many may not afford it, and some prefer the bike (even now in winter) but they seem to love their cars as much as the US given the traffic.

[ironsoap@lemmy.one]

Certainly valid that there isn't a cultural norm for it in the US. With that said, the US still has about 3.3 million EVs on the road. Norway has about 3.4 million cars on the road total.

So it's a heck of a lot easier to enable 5.5 million people to replace their cars then 330 million people. Size matters as much as the identity we have with it on this one.

[majorllama@lemmy.world]

Norway... Who's primary exports are crude oil and petroleum gas.

Also Norway is cold and EVs do not do well in the cold. Especially with current battery technology.

[kecessa@sh.itjust.works]

Meanwhile our Premier just floated the idea to delay the ban on gas car sales... Fun how a new president in the neighboring country makes us give up on our emission goals...

[bronzie@sh.itjust.works]

They work fine in the cold. This old, blatantly wrong, myth needs to die soon.

Source: we use them every damn day all year, including winter.
Sincerely
A Norwegian with an EV daily driver.

[evotech@lemmy.world]

They do work slightly worse when it's very cold, but it's fine.

[aa5b@lemmy.world]

That works both ways. Norway doesn’t have a large base of car manufacturers who can follow their guidance, but the US ties, including Tesla who did so much to popularize EVs and used to dominate

Any large transition need guidance, incentives, motivation to happen in a reasonable time. Norway did that. Meanwhile the us is an inconsistent mess spewing FUD, lobbying by entrenched interests, and very short term thinking. Of course we only have the early adopters who could wade through all that resistance and now with Musks jump to the right we have a whole new obstacle.

• how did Norway get chargers? We just now started government funding and it’s likely cancelled
• when did they provide incentives to help encourage expensive purchases? Us again just recently started a federal incentive, it has been inconsistent and likely will be cancelled
• I’ve ready that Norway had incentives at registration, parking, toll roads. US still hasn’t done those and several states make EV registration more expensive
• too many in the US still claim EVs are impractical or more polluting, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, while Norway did it

[majorllama@lemmy.world]

https://www.redarcelectronics.com/us/resources/chargers-isolators-faqs/do-not-charge-lithium-battery-below-32-degrees/

Charging lithium batteries below a certain temperature is very bad for them.

It also reduces capacity and charge cycles significantly.

Yes they still technically function, but they wear out much faster and output much less as you go colder.

That means you need to replace the batteries much more often.

The batteries are the least environmentally friendly part of the whole EV.

[majorllama@lemmy.world]

See my response to the guy above. I don't think you can say it's only "slightly" worse.

[paddzr@lemmy.world]

Rightttt, if only we had literal millions of these cars work in freezing temps. They're better in cold that ice cars.