Most new cars in Norway are EVs. How a freezing country beat range anxiety. [View all]

Just a few years ago, almost no one drove electric vehicles up here. In this remote region north of the Arctic Circle — where reindeer outnumber people, avalanches can bury roads in winter and sunlight disappears for weeks — “range anxiety” takes on a new meaning.

Today, however, nearly all new car sales in Norway are electric. That’s true even in Finnmark, the northernmost region in Europe’s northernmost country.

Norway is “an unlikely place for a transportation revolution,” acknowledged Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association.

At the Skoda dealership in Alta, Finnmark’s largest city, salesman Orjan Dragland marveled at the transformation — how five years ago, every car on the showroom floor had a combustion engine, and now the inventory is all EVs.

In 2024, nearly 90 percent of new passenger cars sold in Norway were fully electric. Of the cars sold last month, the EV share was 97 percent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/05/30/norway-ev-adoption-electric-cars/