Norway is ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in two years, a decade ahead of the European Union. 

The country leads the world when it comes to electric vehicle (EV) adoption, and its roads offer a glimpse of the future of mobility in Europe. 

EVs already account for more than 20 per cent of all passenger vehicles in the country, and almost 84 per cent of new vehicles sold. When counting plug-in hybrids, the figure is close to 90 per cent, according to the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV). 

“For all practical purposes, anything else than the electric passenger car is simply not interesting for the average new car buyer,” said its CEO Øyvind Solberg Thorsen. 

“We are the first country to kill the combustion car,” he told Euronews Next. 

According to Solberg Thorsen, Norway’s electric car journey began in earnest in the 1990s, when the country started supporting Think, a homegrown compact electric vehicle designed primarily for urban driving that Ford Motor owned for a few years. 

At the time, Think “managed to persuade the Norwegian government to give them subsidies and to make the electric car exempt from all the car taxes,” he explained. “Electric cars drove for free on the toll roads, had free parking, and free access to the ferries”. 

Battery-electric vehicles were also exempted from value-added and import taxes, which are traditionally high on cars in Norway. 

All these incentives created a welcoming environment for Think and its vehicles to enter the market.