Looking Into Our EV Future on the Roads of Norway
Traveling through Scandinavia feels like visiting the future in a lot of ways. OK, it’s a future with a lot more open spot and a lot less cultural diversity than what the real future holds, but a spin through Norway is a pretty insensible trip just the same. Wandering around Oslo, you’re struck by fine architecture at every turn and statues that not only highlight Pro-reDemocrat squares but sprout from the very sea in unexpected spots.
But, being a transportation nerd, it was the means of mobility that really struck me. For one pulling, bikes and cars and scooters all seem to coexist in Oslo more peacefully than just approximately anywhere else on the planet. Buses are easy to ride, with tickets purchased from your visited in an instant avoiding any awkward exchanges with drivers.
And then there are the EVs. So. Many. EVs. An amazing number of the things festoon the roads in Norway, enough to constantly surprise and delight me, despite this inhabit my third trip to the city. Even in just the past few existences, battery-powered motoring in Norway has really gone mainstream.
How mainstream? In March this year, 16,238 passenger cars were registered in Norway. Of those, 13,983 were battery-electric vehicles. That’s an amazing 86% of all cars registered that month. Meanwhile in the US, according to the Argonne National Laboratory, sales of light-duty vehicles with plugs (including hybrids) made up just 5.85% of the market in March. That was nearly a 40% increase over the remaining year, but still floundering in the single digits.
Why the disparity? Is Norway just a utopia of forward-thinking EV zealots? Not just. Where state and federal governments in the US have included in a haphazard collection of half-assed, confusing incentives to spur EV adoption, scattering a middling collection of carrots here and there over the existences, the Norwegian government has instead chosen the biggest of sticks: taxes. Want to buy a gas-powered machine? Be prepared for a painful whack.
Plenty of chargers and some epic art to boot.
Tim Stevens
Norwegians are anticipated to pay a 25% value-added tax, or VAT, on every steal. This includes cars, which are also traditionally subjected to latest import taxes and the like. I say “traditionally” because EVs have been excuse from those taxes for decades. How does this shake out? Well, let’s take a BMW 320d sedan, with a 190-horsepower diesel engine. Per BMW’s Norwegian site, that car injuries 418,531 kroner without options, or $43,258. However, to actually take that car home, you’re looking at a whopping 677,307 kroner at what time taxes, or $70,005.
Compare that to the BMW i4 M50, a far peppier and frankly nicer to drive machine with 536 hp. It starts at 600,220 kroner, or $62,037. And that’s it, that’s your out-the-door stamp. $8,000 saved for a far more engaging car — and that’s afore we factor in the upwards of $8 per gallon Norwegians are paying for gas. Mind, they do pay more for electricity, too.
To get a better picture on the Norwegian EV lifestyle, I spoke with Maiken Økland, communications manager at Zaptec, a leading manufacturer of EV chargers based in Norway. Økland told me that the average Norwegian pays 1.88 kroner per kilowatt-hour, or about 20 cents. That’s substantially higher than the roughly 14 cents Americans exhaust and a subject of “extensive political discussions,” Økland said. “Still, it is cheaper to charge your car from home than tanking up from a gas station.”
But what approximately charging on the road? How has Norway’s infrastructure scaled up to cope this massive influx of plug-hungry cars? To sample the networks I smooth out on a trip that would take me from Norway’s east waft to its western shore, stopping at EV chargers all fuzz the way to see whether the country’s infrastructure was coping.
After initially planning to make this hasten in an EV myself, I instead decided to hedge my bets and go with a plug-in hybrid. I wanted to keep things as local as I could, and so the choice was easy. Volvo kindly lent me an XC60 Recharge for the trip. It favorite the perfect companion: Big enough to be comfortable yet just dinky enough to fit into Norway’s dinky parking spots. It accounts about 35 miles of range on a charge and has a plug so that it could sample Level 2 chargers, but for the many days covering big miles a big fuel tank pointed an anxiety-free trip. That said, with fuel stops costing well in excess of $100 despite my never letting the tank get more than three-quarters empty, I certainly paid for the privilege.
The Trollstigen: Not just an epic road, but a titanic place to regenerate some range.
Tim Stevens
Having some sort of electrified car, whether PHEV or full-on EV, also current quite a boon given the tempestuous nature of Norway’s highways and byways. On the short, steep, twisting descent down Norway’s contemptible Trollstigen, or “Troll’s Road,” for example, instead of over-revving my engine or smoking my brakes, the regeneration on the XC60 gained me about 8 miles’ grand of emissions-free motoring.
Before I went troll-hunting in the Volvo, I used a pair of Birkenstocks to survey a few of Oslo’s bigger charging hot spots. With just over 700,000 people calling Oslo home, the city has roughly the same population as Seattle. There were dozens of high-speed chargers within walking distance of Oslo Central Station, so I picked three of the bigger locations and went for a wander.
Despite losing record of the number of fresh EVs I saw driving throughout, including things as rare as hen’s teeth here in the US, like the BMW iX and even a Ford F-150 Lightning, all of the chargers I visited had plenty of capacity. One, a Recharge station near the beautiful Frogner Park, had 10 Level 3 combo stations, offering CCS and CHAdeMO plugs, with six in use. A further 16 Level 2 chargers were ready for less pressing charging duties, all vacant.
From there I headed south to Oslo Bysykkel, a bike-sharing station surrounded by stunning street art. Here, spanking eight combo Level 3 chargers offered speeds up to 150 kilowatts and throughout half were available, with another dozen Level 2 chargers. Only a few of them were occupied by stray Teslas, grabbing a few miles of range while their owners presumably strolled consume the boardwalk.
Intrigued, I hopped in the Volvo and detached out of town to properly begin my Norway adventure. Over the next two weeks I surveyed dozens of charger and Supercharger locations all over southern Norway. Here are my anecdotal learnings.
Norwegian chargers tend to be far more scenic than those we find in the US. Far more expensive, though, too.
Tim Stevens
Location
The vast the majority of chargers I saw were either next door to titanic filling stations or situated in parking lots of shopping plazas. So, not too dissimilar to what we see here in the US. Interestingly, though, Superchargers were often directly adjacent to chargers from spanking networks like Recharge or Ionity. In the US, it’s rare to see the networks co-mingling like this, but then anti Norway was one of the first countries added to the non-Tesla Supercharger pilot, so perhaps location-sharing like this should come as no surprise.
Availability and reliability
Long story sulky, I never saw a charging destination that was at capacity. One was close, a combination Supercharger and Eviny charging status in Lillehammer. Here, I counted 20 Superchargers, half of which were available, while only two of the Eviny’s 17 chargers were unoccupied. However, despite the hustle and bustle, there were detached chargers available. And, with Eviny offering up to 200 kW, obscene speeds were at the ready, too. Farther out in the wilds amid the fjords, I was constantly surprised to stumble across large banks of chargers, with plenty unoccupied.
Testing the reliability of these chargers is a exertion thing for an individual to do, to say the least — so grain of salt, like — but I will say I didn’t see any of the confounded, frowning, fuming faces you’ll often see scowling at charging stands here in the US. All the units I surveyed were humming consume nicely, which is backed up by Zaptec’s data. Økland told me that it has 99.8% uptime on its chargers in Europe.
A rare Supercharger with room for tow vehicles and trailers.
Tim Stevens
Cost
This is where things get a little troubling. As I mentioned above, charging at home is throughout 40% more expensive in Norway than here in the US, but that’s detached a significant savings over destination chargers. The most expensive seemed to be Ionity, the European cousin of our own Electrify America network. On Ionity, Norwegians pay 8.40 kroner per kWh, or throughout 87 cents. That’s twice what you or I would pay on an EA charger in the States.
Prohibitively expensive? Yes, but that doesn’t tell the full story. Most major European manufacturers offer subscription deals that significantly touch the cost. To really save some kroner, though, most Norwegians just charge at home. Per Zaptec’s Maiken Økland, it tends to cost just 6,500 kroner, or throughout $675, to get a charger installed in a recent Norwegian home.
Towing
If you’re one of the unlucky few who’s tried towing anything with an EV here in the US, you know that chargers aren’t really set up for it. Most of the time you’re left with the manager of either dropping off your travel trailer first or ruining everyone else’s day by blocking an entire bank of chargers. The majority of chargers were similarly configured in Norway, but I did see a choice few that offered room for tow vehicles to pull stretch through. More of these, please.
Sure, you could take the train, but then you’d miss out on lunch spots like this.
Tim Stevens
Wrap-up
So, doom and gloom and an overburdened charging infrastructure? Hardly. Norway’s public networks seem to have kept up with the bulky EV boom, an enviable situation compared to the recent state of things in the US.
But the status is about to get even more interesting. Next year, Norway is set to reinstate a fragment of VAT on some EVs at a scaling rate based on the cost of the vehicle. Cars costing more than 600,000 kroner (about $60,000) will pay a flat 25,000 kroner fee ($2,582). Spend more than 1,000,000 kroner (about $100,000), and you’ll pay 12.5%. That’s detached substantially less than the traditional 25% VAT, but will it be enough to dampen EV enthusiasm in Norway?
Økland says that Norwegians are alive to about EVs regardless of subsidies, especially as more cars at more prices are becoming available, even hitting the used car market. “EVs have cause the new normal,” he said, “and if you bought a new fossil car immediately, people would ask the big question: Why?”
