Nearly 60% of cars sold in Norway in March are electric

Nearly sixty percent of all new cars sold in Norway in March are fully electric. This is another record; last year, one in three cars sold in the country was all-electric. The Tesla Model 3 is responsible for the current peak in March.

The Norwegian Road Federation has said the exact percentage of new electric cars sold in March stood at 58.4 percent, Reuters reports. This is a significant increase compared to, for example, the percentage for the whole of 2018, which came to 31.2 percent. In 2017 this was still 20.8 percent and in 2013 that percentage was 5.5.

The percentage for the whole of 2019 will probably be lower than the current 60 percent in March, but it will still be relatively high, according to estimates. According to the head of the Norwegian Road Federation, about half of all new cars sold in 2019 are expected to be all-electric.

The sharp increase last month is mainly due to the fact that Tesla recently introduced its Model 3 in Europe. More than 5,300 of these were delivered and sold in Norway in March, out of a total of 5818 new electric cars sold. For example, only 1021 new electric cars were sold in February and 1410 in March 2018.

Norway is still far ahead in the world when it comes to the amount of new electric cars sold compared to the number of inhabitants. This is partly due to the relatively high taxes on petrol and diesel cars.

The percentage of cars sold with only a traditional combustion engine in Norway stood at 22.7 percent in March. That’s the lowest percentage ever. That means about 19 percent of cars sold in the previous month were hybrid models.