L’Europe could become the first continent to abandon combustion engines in the near future, but there is not much certainty about the decade in which this event could happen. And the conditional is a must. But all this does not apply to the Scandinaviaand especially for Norway: here electric or electrified cars are now masters of the market.
According to the data processed by Schmidt Automotive Research, over 3 million electric cars have been sold in Western Europe since the start of their commercial venture. And the first consequence is that in the country with Oslo capital, dealers will soon no longer have an interest in keeping endothermic cars as well in their showrooms. Here, in the first quarter of 2022, 9 out of 10 models with plug charging were registered, therefore electric or plug-in hybrids. Only thanks to this hybridization, the internal combustion engine is still a market factor.
Over 100 different models of electric cars have arrived on the Scandinavian and northernmost European markets in the last ten years. In Norway this led to a PHEV / BEV mix of 89.8% in the first quarter of 2022, with still 30 months before the last official farewell to cars exclusively powered by petrol or diesel. In Iceland the mix is at 62.7%, in Sweden at 53.5%, in Finland at 34.4% and in Denmark at 33.6%. Incidentally, they are the top five European markets for electrified cars. The first country in Europe of 27 is Holland, with a mix of electrified at 28.6%.
For this reason, although the population of the top five countries is only a fraction of that of Germany, with Germany being the queen of European auto markets, premium Chinese brands are choosing Scandinavia to launch their products. Brands like Nio, XPeng and BYD are keen to get their sharewaiting for the citizens of the most populous countries to have a better chance of switching to electricity.
However, Italy and France, just to give two large examples, will not easily be able to exploit the same policies of Norway, with high incentives and lower tax revenues, accompanied by a strong push towards renewables. The high standard of living in the Nordic countries is not yet replicable, proportionally, in our latitudes.
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