Norway: BEV Share Hits Record, PHEVs Collapse In January 2022

Norway starts the year 2022 with a decrease in new passenger car registrations by almost 23% year-over-year in January to 7,957. It’s the lowest result since 2009.

Also, plug-in electric car registrations decreased to 7,199 (down 13.6%), but the market share improved to 90.5% (near record).

Interesting is what happened with all-electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) sales. As it turns out, electric car sales continue to increase with 6,660 units sold last month (up 22%) at a new all-time record share of 83.7%.

On the other hand, plug-in hybrids collapsed 81.3% to just 539, the lowest level since late 2015. The PHEV market share was 6.8%.

The reason for that is reduced tax incentives (CO₂ emission component) for PHEVs as the country would like to switch to 100% zero-emission cars (new sales) by 2025 (see the Finance Ministry statement here). The incentives for all-electric cars remain the same, including the exemption from the 25% VAT tax, at least until the end of 2022.

Stats for the month:

• BEVs: 6,660 (up 22%, at 83.7% market share) + 783 “used” + 371 new vans
• PHEVs: 539 (down 81.3%, at 6.8% market share)
• Total: 7,199 (down 13.6%, at 90.5% market share)

For reference, in 2021, almost 152,000 new passenger plug-ins were registered.

Plug-in car registrations in 2021:

• BEVs: 113,751 (up 48%, at 64.5% market share)
• PHEVs: 38,166 (up 32%, at 21.7% market share)
• Total: 151,917 (up 44%, at 86.2% market share)

The gasoline, diesel and non-rechargeable hybrids are marginalized to less than 9% of the market in January (2.2% gasoline, 2.7% diesel, 4.6% hybrids):

The year 2022 brings us a totally new top 20 list of new models in Norway, specifically with all-new electric models that were recently launched at the very top.

The Audi Q4 e-tron (MEB-based cousin of the Volkswagen ID.4 and Skoda Enyaq iV) is on the top with 643 new registrations. Then we see the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (477) and freshly launched BMW iX (444).

That’s quite impressive. It’s now difficult to find a non-electric model on the list, there are some ICE/PHEVs counted together though.

After the very strong finish in December 2021, there are no Tesla cars on the list at all. January was clearly an off-peak month for the company without new car supply. Only time will tell whether Tesla will once again catch up along the way.

What we can notice is a new Chinese BEV – Hongqi E-HS9 at #16 with 175 registrations.