World News

Norway, the world’s leading country in EV market share, still managed to maintain high EV market share right after retiring EV incentives, showing the world a path to resilient electrification of the auto industry.

Norwegian auto sales numbers are out for the month of January, and after a record December, there was some nervousness about what could happen once EV incentives were reduced.

Norway has had generous incentives for EVs over the years, including tax exemptions, special access, free parking and the like. These were all meant to work towards Norway’s world-leading goal of 100% EV sales by 2025, a number that it has basically met despite many thinking only a few years ago that it would be impossible.

Many of Norway’s incentives have been pared down over time as EV momentum became inevitable, but the biggest change in a while just went into effect.

EV market share did drop slightly, but by such a small percentage as to be negligible. In January 2025, EVs made up 95.8% of the Norwegian market, and in January 2026, they made up 94%. In December, they were 97%. Needless to say, these are all high numbers.

The actual numbers show that there’s nothing to be concerned about here: In January 2026, only 98 diesel cars were sold across all of Norway, alongside 29 hybrids and 7 petrol-only cars. In a nation with nearly 6 million vehicles on its roads (the plurality of which are now electric). And that actually represents a decrease in fossil car sales from last January, not an increase.

Meanwhile, 2,084 EVs were sold in January – which is also a big drop from December and from last year, but we’ll get to that.