Only seven new petrol cars were sold Norway Last month, the data shows.
The country, which is a leader in the use of electric vehicles, replaced a record low number of new fossil-fueled cars in January, data from the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) revealed.
Only seven petrol, 29 hybrid and 98 diesel cars were registered, while more than 2,000 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) were sold.
Car sales are down across the board – customers rushed to buy cars in December to avoid a tax hike in January – but petrol cars have surged as Norway races to completely stop sales of internal combustion engines, which heat the planet and make extreme weather more violent.
“The January figures are not a sign that demand has stopped, but are the result of an unusual final rush before the new year,” says OFV director Geer Inge Stöck. “We expect registrations to pick up again as the market stabilizes.”
BEVs accounted for 95.9% of new car sales in Norway last year. Analysts say that the country is rich in oil The electric vehicle boom High carbon taxes, generous EV subsidies and the absence of a powerful lobby opposing the transition.
The Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association’s secretary general, Kristina Bu, said the data for 2025 “definitely doesn’t mean the job is over”.
“Two out of three people still drive fossil-fueled cars,” she told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. “We have to be just as ambitious in 2026 if we want them to be able to choose electric cars.”
There are signs that the move away from vehicles that burn fossil fuels has also seeped into Norway’s secondhand car market. According to OFV, sales of used electric cars increased by 22.7% compared to January last year, with electric vehicles accounting for one in every four cars on the used car market.
“Electrification is clearly taking hold in the used car market right now,” Stoke said. “This makes the electric car a more accessible alternative to more buyers than ever before.”
Norway has long embraced electric vehicles, but other countries are catching up. Denmark has seen explosive growth, with BEV sales increasing from 2% to 68% over the past decade. The BEV market share also exceeded 33% in the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium and Sweden.
Smaller and wealthier northern countries have led Europe’s transition to cleaner transport, but popular emerging markets such as China and India are catching up. Data published last month show that Turkey is also included caught With the EU in the rate of adoption of BEVs, and in absolute terms its electric market is larger than Norway.
China’s sales of electric cars, including hybrids, have surpassed sales of internal combustion engine cars.
