In Norway, the EV future has already arrived

About 80% of new cars sold in Norway are battery-powered. Thus, the air is cleaner, and the electric grid hasn’t collapsed. But problems with unreliable chargers persist

By Jack Ewing

About 110 miles south of Oslo, along a highway lined with pine and birch trees, a shiny fuelling station offers a glimpse of a future where electric vehicles rule.

Chargers far outnumber gasoline pumps at the service area operated by Circle K, a retail chain that got its start in Texas. During summer weekends, when Oslo residents flee to country cottages, the line to recharge sometimes backs up down the off-ramp.

Marit Bergsland, who works at the store, has had to learn how to help frustrated customers connect to chargers in addition to her regular duties flipping burgers and ringing up purchases of salty licorice, a popular treat. “Sometimes we have to give them a coffee to calm down,” she said.

Last year, 80 per cent of new-car sales in Norway were electric, putting the country at the vanguard of the shift to battery-powered mobility. It has also turned Norway into an observatory for figuring out what the electric vehicle revolution might mean for the environment, workers and life in general. The country will end the sales of internal combustion engine cars in 2025.

Norway’s experience suggests that electric vehicles bring benefits without the dire consequences predicted by some critics. There are problems, of course, including unreliable chargers and long waits during periods of high demand. Auto dealers and retailers have had to adapt. The switch has reordered the auto industry, making Tesla the bestselling brand and marginalizing established carmakers like Renault and Fiat.

But the air in Oslo, Norway’s capital, is measurably cleaner. The city is also quieter as noisier gasoline and diesel vehicles are scrapped. Oslo’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 30 per cent since 2009, yet there has not been mass unemployment among gas station workers, and the electrical grid has not collapsed. Some lawmakers and corporate executives portray the fight against climate change as requiring grim sacrifice. “With EVs, it’s not like that,” said Christina Bu, secretary-general of the Norwegian EV Association, which represents owners. “It’s actually something that people embrace.”

Norway began promoting electric vehicles in the 1990s to support Think, a homegrown electric vehicle start-up that Ford Motor owned for a few years. Battery-powered vehicles were exempted from value-added and import taxes and from highway tolls.

The government also subsidised the construction of fast charging stations, crucial in a country nearly as big as California with just 5.5 million people. The combination of incentives and ubiquitous charging “took away all the friction factors,” said Jim Rowan, the CEO of Volvo Cars, based in neighboring Sweden. The policies put Norway more than a decade ahead of the US. The Biden administration aims for 50 per cent of new-vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, a milestone Norway passed in 2019.

A few feet from a six-lane highway that skirts Oslo’s waterfront, metal pipes jut from the roof of a prefabricated shed. The building measures pollution from the traffic zooming by, a stone’s throw from a bicycle path and a marina.

Levels of nitrogen oxides, by-products of burning gasoline and diesel that cause smog, asthma and other ailments, have fallen sharply as electric vehicle ownership has risen. “We are on the verge of solving the NOx problem,” said Tobias Wolf, Oslo’s chief engineer for air quality, referring to nitrogen oxides.

But there is still a problem where the rubber meets the road. Oslo’s air has unhealthy levels of microscopic particles generated partly by the abrasion of tires and asphalt. Electric vehicles, which account for about one-third of the registered vehicles in the city but a higher proportion of traffic, may even aggravate that problem.

“They’re really a lot heavier than internal combustion engine cars, and that means that they are causing more abrasion,” said Wolf, who, like many Oslo residents, prefers to get around by bicycle.

Another persistent problem: Apartment residents say finding a place to plug in their cars remains a challenge. In the basement of an Oslo restaurant recently, local lawmakers and residents gathered to discuss the issue.

Sirin Hellvin Stav, Oslo’s vice mayor for environment and transport, said at the event that the city wants to install more public chargers but also reduce the number of cars by one-third to make streets safer and free space for walking and cycling.

“The goal is to cut emissions, which is why EVs are so important, but also to make the city better to live in,” Stav, a member of the Green Party, said in an interview later.

Electric vehicles are part of a broader plan by Oslo to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to almost zero by 2030. All city buses will be electric by the end of the year.

Oslo is also targeting construction, the source of more than one-quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions. Contractors bidding on public projects have a better chance of winning if they use equipment that runs on electricity or biofuels.

Espen Hauge, who manages city construction projects, said he was surprised at how quickly contractors substituted hard-to-find electric equipment for diesel machinery. “Some projects that we thought were impossible or very difficult to do zero emission, we still got the tender for zero emission,” he said.

Stav acknowledged what she called the hypocrisy of Norway’s drive to reduce greenhouse gases while producing lots of oil and gas. Fossil-fuel exports generated revenue of $180 billion last year. “We’re exporting that pollution,” Stav said, noting that her party has called for oil and gas production to be phased out by 2035. NYT