The government of Norway recently reported that 88.9% of new cars sold in the country in 2024 were 100% electric. Headlines claim that “Norway Is All In on Electric Cars,” but it wasn’t due to consumer choice.
The Norwegian government has set the goal that all new passenger cars and light vans sold by 2025 should be zero-emissions. Heavy-duty vehicles should largely reach zero-emissions by 2030.
Norway has gotten this far with expensive carrots for EVs and punishing sticks for gasoline vehicles. The Norwegian government credits a “combination of taxation rules and incentives” for the “high adoption of EVs.” Norway also exempts EVs from most road usage taxes, which it describes as “intended to cover external costs such as noise, local air pollution and congestion.” EVs can also only be charged 70% of toll road rates by local authorities. Norway also penalizes the purchase of gasoline and diesel cars with high registration taxes.
When one option is costly and another heavily subsidized, consumers must make choices in accordance with their pocketbook.
This model wouldn’t scale in the U.S., anyway. Norway has a small population of approximately 5.5 million, with dense urban geography and almost 90% hydroelectric power. The U.S. has 330 million people across thousands of miles, powered by a diverse energy mix.
Norway is able to fund its lavish EV subsidies in part with oil revenues. The oil and gas sector in Norway is the largest in terms of value added, government revenues, investments, and export value. In 2025, oil and gas revenues made up 21% of GDP, 32% of Norway’s revenues, 22% of Norway’s total investments, and 48% of total exports. And the Norwegian government openly acknowledges the costs: In 2025, it expects a loss of 50 billion NOK ($4.86 billion) in car-related taxes, with a total revenue loss of 640 billion NOK ($62.2 billion) from 2007 to 2025.
Norway might consider the costs of the lithium, cobalt, and nickel involved in manufacturing EV batteries, too. Those have environmental costs as well—particularly when mined in environmentally destructive ways, sometimes by child labor, in Chinese-owned mines. For instance, a 2024 Department of Labor report interviewed cobalt workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and found that 44% could not refuse to do hazardous work, 85% reported restrictions on their movement, and 52% of workers reported children working at their mine site, especially artisanal mines (63%).
Norway’s push for EVs isn’t proof that the market wants electric cars. It’s proof that if the government of a small, oil-rich country twists the economic screws hard enough, it can manufacture demand for EVs. That isn’t a model for consumer choice, fairness, or fiscal responsibility, and it isn’t a model that would work in the U.S.