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Just seven new petrol cars were sold in Norway last month, data shows.
The country, which is the frontrunner in the uptake of electric vehicles, shifted a record low number of new fossil-fuel cars in January, information from the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) reveals.
Only seven petrol, 29 hybrid and 98 diesel cars were registered, while more than 2,000 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) were sold.
Car sales were low across the board – customers had rushed to buy cars in December to avoid January tax rises – but the snub to petrol cars comes as Norway races closer to fully phasing out the sale of internal combustion engines that heat the planet and make extreme weather more violent.
“The January figures are not a sign that demand has stopped, but a result of the extraordinary final rush before the new year,” the OFV’s director, Geir Inge Stokke, said. “We expect registrations to pick up again as the market stabilises.”
BEVs made up 95.9% of new-car sales in Norway last year. Analysts say the oil-rich country’s electric vehicle boom is the result of high carbon taxes, generous EV subsidies and the lack of a powerful lobby to oppose the transition.
The secretary general of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, Christina Bu, said the data for 2025 “certainly doesn’t mean the job is over”.
“Two out of three people still drive fossil-fuel cars,” she told the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK. “If they are to have the opportunity to choose electric cars, we must be just as ambitious in 2026.”
There are signs that the shift away from vehicles that burn fossil fuels has also trickled into Norway’s secondhand car market. Sales of used electric cars increased by 22.7% compared with January last year, according to the OFV, with electric vehicles making up one in four cars on the used-car market.
“Electrification is now clearly taking hold in the used car market as well,” said Stokke. “This makes the electric car a more accessible alternative for far more buyers than before.”
Norway has long led the uptake of electric vehicles, but other countries are gaining pace. Denmark has witnessed explosive growth, with BEV sales soaring from 2% to 68% in the last decade. BEV market share has also surpassed 33% in the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium and Sweden.
Small and wealthy northern nations have led Europe’s transition to cleaner transport, but they are being joined by populous emerging markets such as China and India. Data published last month shows that Turkey has also caught up with the EU in its adoption rate for BEVs, and in absolute terms its electric market is bigger than Norway’s.
China’s sales of electric cars, including hybrids, have surpassed those of internal combustion engine cars.
