Tesla has become the best-selling brand in Norway for the whole year of 2021 despite having only two models available on the market, which helped the country hit again new electric vehicle records.
Norway has been the leading market for electric vehicles in terms of adoption per capita.
As many markets are introducing plans to “ban” gas-powered cars by 2030, 2035, and even later, Norway is aiming for each new car on the road to be all-electric by 2025, and it’s on pace to achieve that early.
The results this year have been nothing short of stunning, with the December numbers released today being no exception and showing us the whole year.
64.5% of all cars sold in Norway in 2021 were all-electric – up 10 points from last year:
| Passenger cars | Number in December 2021 | Market share in December 2021 | Market share in December 2020 | Market share throughout 2021 | Market share throughout 2020 |
| Only petrol engine | 686 | 3.3% | 2.7% | 4.2% | 8.0% |
| Only diesel engine | 720 | 3.5% | 4.8% | 4.0% | 8.6% |
| Hybrids all | 5 358 | 26.1% | 25.8% | 27.2% | 29.1% |
| Electric cars | 13 793 | 67.1% | 66.7% | 64.5% | 54.3% |
As you can see, sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines (petrol and diesel) have slowed to a crawl with only 4% market shares each.
If you look at the top 10 best-selling vehicles in the market in 2021, you will only find all-electric vehicles except for the Toyota RAV4:
Tesla Model 3 is leading by a wide margin and the brand also has the Model Y in 4th place with over 8,000 units delivered in 2021.
It was enough to make Tesla the best-selling car brand in the country in 2021:
That’s despite not delivering any Model S and Model X in the market and the Model Y coming later in the year. Other electric vehicles also added significant volumes, like the VW ID.4 electric SUV, the Volvo XC40, and the Mustang Mach-E.
Electrek’s Take
This goes to show that the notion of Tesla falling once the competition arrives is false.
The EV competition has arrived in Norway, but it doesn’t affect Tesla because the demand for EVs in the market still outpaces supply. For years, I’ve been talking about an imminent market shift, which for the US, I think should happen in 2024-25, where the vast majority of new car buyers realize that their next car needs to be all-electric.
That shift already happened in Norway and we see what’s happening in the market. Soon, we are going to see more and more markets making a similar shift and whatever automaker can allocate more EV supply in those markets will come out on top.
Right now, this is still Tesla.
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