| ▲ | walthamstow 15 hours ago |
| Norway is a very special case in that it has massive hydro energy resources and nobody lives there. |
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| ▲ | onraglanroad 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Norway has roughly the population of the average US state. So I guess no-one really lives in the USA. |
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| ▲ | warmwaffles 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The crazier fact is that a hand full of cities alone in the US has a higher population than all of Norway. | | | |
| ▲ | Amezarak 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Let's put it more concretely: Norway has about the same amount of people as Alabama. | | |
| ▲ | 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | hdgvhicv 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So nobody lives in Alabama | | |
| ▲ | skeeter2020 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I understand that you're being intentionally difficult, and probably think it's quite clever, but clear to the rest of us that the original point was that Norway is an extreme outlier with their immense (oil) wealth, hydroelectricity generation and tiny population density. |
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| ▲ | kypro 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 0.1% of the population is pretty close to 0% to be fair. | |
| ▲ | 7thpower 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The USA has 50 states. |
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| ▲ | Nition 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There must be more to it than this, or we'd have fantastic EV uptake here in New Zealand (we don't - EVs currently only have a 6% market share). |
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| ▲ | walthamstow 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As other siblings have said, it's also very rich and offers mega tax breaks for EVs. Out of interest, do you mean 6% of cars on the road of 6% of new cars sold last year? | | |
| ▲ | Nition 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean sales, specifically new car pure EV sales for 2025. We are only at 3% EVs on the road. I think for much of the population a brand new EV is simply too expensive. | | |
| ▲ | tormeh 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | Tbf a plug-in is just an EV that somehow runs on petrol 4 times a year. In practice the vast majority of driving is done on battery power. | | |
| ▲ | dalyons 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | sadly thats not true at all. In practice, on average as a category, PHEVs barely save any real world emissions over gas (~20%). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-... https://electrek.co/2026/02/19/biggest-study-yet-shows-plug-... | |
| ▲ | Nition 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you include PHEVs along with pure EVs the total is around 12% total sales for 2025, and 4% total on the road. I'm not sure when PHEVs became available overseas but they haven't been an option here for that long. Heaps of hybrids are being sold but for now still mostly of the traditional non-plug-in type. As alliao says, this is partly because of the way road user charges (RUC) currently work, though that is slated to change in the future. | | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hybrids and PHEVs are more complicated given that they are both ICEs and EVs. A pure EV is much cheaper, and many places in the developing world don't have easy access to oil anyways. | | |
| ▲ | hedora 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Even in the US, our overpriced EVs are cheaper than comparable ICE. They’re mostly big, and compete with 20mpg models. At $4/gallon, you’ll spend $40K on gasoline to drive a new ICE car 200K miles. The EV premium is typically $10-20K. These are all luxury cars, so a trimline upgrade is often $10K. EVs have particularly poor resale value (the technology improves rapidly), so if you’re price sensitive you can get a much better deal by buying something a few years old. In places where competition is allowed, EVs are much cheaper than ICE. That’ll eventually be true in most places. If NZ lets the Chinese models in, I’d expect them to take over immediately. | | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Model 3s are Honda Accord class, so compacts, not sub-compacts. I haven't seen many sub-compact EVs in the states beyond the Leaf and the Bolt. I’m kind of excited about the new BmW i3, which will be a more normal 3 series size and shape vs the old i3. I won’t buy it of course, I’ve decided I’m not replacing my i4 before a real self driving car is available. I can't imagine why NZ doesn't allow Chinese EVs in already like Australia has. I would guess it isn’t really about restriction but rather the smaller size of the market. | | |
| ▲ | Nition 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | We do have Chinese EVs here in NZ, the comment above is incorrect. Although curiously, Nissan has stopped selling us the Leaf. |
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| ▲ | alliao 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | nz politicians figured out where the tap is to control uptake.. in the name of RUC right now it's tuned so non-plugin hybrid is cheapest, this separates out the price sensitive crowd... |
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| ▲ | robocat 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > massive hydro energy resources That is irrelevant unless Norway has unused capacity. If a country adds electric cars using more electric power, then what really matters is how that extra power is generated. It gets weird in Europe because adding extra load in Norway could easily mean that Poland does more generation using coal. I'm in New Zealand where the government owned generators are preventing solar installations. One example was via an unobvious regulation that the installation had to handle massively overengineered earthquake rules. Meanwhile we use coal or imported gas when the isn't enough rain for our hydro. And we waste about 10% of our total capacity exporting (via one aluminium plant). |
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| ▲ | grumbelbart2 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Going all electric with cars would add ~10-15% of electric demand. That's a bit, but not really a deal breaker, and something Norway would easily be able to offset by adding more wind turbines. |
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| ▲ | reverius42 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > hydro energy resources What is a hydro energy resource, a river? Don't lots of countries have rivers? (If we're talking about hydroelectric power plants they've chosen to build, that's not exactly a resource -- and other countries could choose to build those too, right?) |
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| ▲ | margalabargala 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not just a river, a river plus either an elevation drop or a drownable valley. A river winding along a flat plain is not a hydro energy resource. A river in the same valley as your capital city is not a hydro energy resource. | |
| ▲ | theappsecguy 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Building hydro energy requires a very specific geography. You can't just take any river and turn it into an efficient hydroplant. | |
| ▲ | ascorbic 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You need both the right geography and a lack of either people or democracy in the place you want to build it. That rules out new large hydro projects in most of Europe. | |
| ▲ | lukan 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Norway has really a lots of rivers with lots of potential energy of the water, since it comes from the mountains at high altitude (Fjords). Some big slow moving river in a flat land on the other hand is not helping you here. | |
| ▲ | 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | speedgoose 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Solar and wind is cheap too, no need to attack the Middle East. |
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| ▲ | ascorbic 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| More importantly it's one of the richest countries in the world, and has high taxes but big tax breaks for EVs. |
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| ▲ | throwaway5752 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And massive oil resources. As a result of this, one of the wealthiest sovereign wealth funds on the planet, which they manage well and for the good of the country. Their hydro energy company is an aluminum company company, they have so much slack power they export it refining bauxite. It is worth repeating solar panels covering an area about the size of NH generate enough power to supply all current entire US energy needs. |
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| ▲ | designerarvid 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| And lots of bad conscious from all the oil. |
