Norway Plug In Vehicle Sales Q4 and Full Year 2015
Plug-in sales in Norway summed up to 34 300 passenger cars and light commercial vehicles. This is a 71 % growth over 2014, when 20 100 units were delivered. Norway is the 4th largest market for electrically chargeable vehicles, only USA, China and, recently, the Netherlands have higher plug-in sales. Regarding plug-in share, Norway is still the undisputed leader, with 18,7 %; no other country is even close to this result. In 2014, the share was 11,5 %.
Quarter 4 brought a strong increase by 95 % over 2014, with 9100 registrations during the last 3 months. December was somewhat below expectations in terms of plug-in share (16,5 %) in a very strong overall market of 17 543 passenger cars & LCVs, which was 15 % higher than 2014. The 2015 total light vehicle market increased by 6 % over 2014.
Is the tipping point reached? Going by the rules for diffusion of innovation (Rogers), mass market adoption starts when the first 15 - 18% of a given sector have bought the idea. By that measure, Norway has just reached the tipping point. With tax incentives kept as generous as they are, Noway can enter the next phase of plug-in growth.
Plug-in Hybrids increasing in Norway
Following the introduction of higher tax savings on PHEV, their share in the mix has more than doubled to 23 % in 2015; in Q4 it was as high as 30%, lifted by a variety of new PHEV models for MY 2016, high Mitsubishi Outlander sales and an extraordinarily weak quarter for Nissan Leaf.
Sales of pure EVs increased by 8000 units (+44 %), PHEVs gained 6200 units (+365 %) during the year.
We expect the EV / PHEV split to be around 70 / 30 during 2016. Model news favor PHEV volume, but the pure EV sector will have to rely on growth in existing models. The long awaited Tesla Model X SUV is unlikely to make it to Europe early enough to contribute with significant volume in 2016.
December Norwegian EV sales figures
One of the most popular EVs in Norway is not on this chart. We assume (and hope) that the near black-out of the Nissan Leaf (just 19 units delivered in December) was of temporary nature and sales resume in January. Shortage of the enhanced 30 kWh version was the likely problem.
Compared to the annual ranking further down in this article, December has some more anomalies: Outlander and i3 went up two notches. The Outlander had is 2nd best month ever (only Nov 2015 was higher) and the i3 was boosted by 80 registrations during the last 3 days of the year. They displaced the Model S to place 4, its 373 units were close to the monthly average of the year. The Volvo V60 PHEV, available since January 2013, had it's best month ever, 115 were delivered.
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