How Norway KILLED the Petrol Car

[Music] well hello friends and welcome to the beautiful beautiful city of oslo we've been here for all of two hours now and here's why we're here eagle leaf i3 i3 model 3 model 3 leaf e-golf oslo norway in general is the ev capital of the world in january of 2022 83.7 of new cars sold were pure electric vehicles another seven odd percent were hybrids which means less than 10 percent of new cars sold were purely petrol or diesel we're here to figure out why norway is so far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of ev uptake what is this country doing so right what can the rest of the world learn from what's being done here and what do the 80s synth pop band aha have to do with it all this is how norway killed the petrol car and this is fully charged [Music] it's time fully charged live europe the world's number one electric vehicle and clean energy show sponsored by mobility service arrives at the rye in amsterdam on the 20th 21st and 22nd of may [Music] get your tickets today [Music] to begin our trip we thought it best to take a little tour around the city to see what mass ev uptake actually looks like in real life and what better way to get around oslo than in a norwegian made electric thing don't get hit by a tram and don't get hit by a tram well welcome to the pride of norway this is the paxter it's a last mile urban delivery vehicle designed and manufactured right here in norway there's about 3000 of these things on the road globally most of them are here where the norwegian postal service relies heavily on them but there's about 500 of them in new zealand and they're currently doing a trial in britain with our very own royal mail it's got about 60 miles of range give or take depending on which one you go for and if you drive one of these around all day long delivering post the energy consumed will equate to roughly what a van would get from 0.7 liters of diesel and it's got heated handlebars my tour guide for the day was christina boo she's the secretary general of norway's ev association a tireless advocate for electric cars and an absolute legend and to kick things off she took me to have a look at the car that started it all so christina what is this cute little thing this is a buddy i think buddy and also the car think both have a lot of the honor for the eevee success that we now have in norway because they were both produced in norway manufactured in norway and part of the reason why the politicians started with incentives and tax exemptions so this was one of the first cars that you could buy and then you got to drive in bus lanes you didn't have to pay tolls on the roads exactly a lot of people bought this one and think and drove in the bus lane into oslo and they yeah didn't have to pay tolls and so on so they were quite popular and they're still around the speedometer goes up to 100 kilometers an hour yeah optimistic right [Music] so i happen to know that you are a walking encyclopedia of norwegian ev related facts and figures can you give me a few key stats and numbers that summarize the current landscape here last year was another record year 64.5 percent of all new car sales were full electric cars this year is even better so far this year it's 80 percent fully electric uh so we're getting very close to the goal with which is 100 market share from 2025 which is less than three years from now and that's obviously not including hybrids which also make up i think nine or ten percent so we're down to maybe ten percent of new cars every month being just petrol is that right that's that's true but we're focusing on the zero emission cars here in norway that's the goal the end goal so so that's why i'm talking about full electric ones do you have any rough idea of when we may see a month where there's zero pure ice cars sold do you think we'll see that this year i think we're getting quite close at least if you look at private purchases because the market shares there is actually above 90 percent now but well we'll see maybe in one of the counties we will see it soon [Music] [Applause] next we headed into the very centre of the city where christina said she had a surprise for me it's so peaceful here it's hard to believe that we're in the center of a big city yeah do you want me to show you something jack of course should we go in here no do you want to come you can have a secret in here show you are you scared no no no this looks like a normal place to take someone this is an abandoned railway you know it's a fortress up here i'm gonna go visit some ghosts okay oh is this a car park this is a car park reserved for electric cars [Music] oh it's huge it's big and this is just the start of it [Music] well i think this is just about the most norwegian thing i've seen all day so far this is an eevee only parking garage and every spot has its own charger yeah so this is reserved for full electric cars only and it's very central so a lot of people that drive into oslo in the morning can park and charge here during the day and go back home after what we have here is a nice cross-section of the evs in oslo and what cars people drive notice there's a lot of old stuff on the road you see a lot of mitsubishi imeves and early leaves people really look after their evs here and keep them running a long time nissan leaf started selling people started buying them very early so there's actually i think 75 000 nissan leaves in norway or so so it's a lot of the it's probably the most common car you can see charging infrastructure obviously a huge part of reassuring people to go electric if there's not enough charges people are not going to buy electric cars it feels like in the uk it's always just a bit behind the number of evs the charge is never quite enough do you feel that norway's done a better job of keeping it level well um we definitely started with the cars the chargers were for many years lagging behind but today it's it's a whole lot better and normal chargers like this uh it's supported here in oslo for for example apartment buildings get some support to put them up there's uh not that much need for sort of public normal chargers like this as people charge at home mostly so the big focus now is on fast charging obviously now christina said something very very important just then about home charging and if you weren't paying close attention you may just have missed it so here's an idiot on a rooftop to explain now oslo's public charging network is very very good in fact over the last 10 years as the number of evs on the road has been skyrocketing the number of evs per fast charger has been steadily going down proof that the city is building these charges preemptively instead of reactively as most cities should as very few cities are and that's very good but of course as we know the most important charger is the one you have at home that's where you want to be doing 95 of your charging if you are lucky enough to have your own driveway or parking spots and that's potentially tricky in oslo because many many people in this city live in high-rise apartment buildings with private underground car parks and as just about anyone who's ever rented can tell you landlords not super well known for going above and beyond the absolute bare minimum required from them i know people in london who have had landlords flat out refuse to let them fit charges to their rented properties even when they offer to cover the cost themselves happily oslo has a couple of policies in place designed to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen the first is called the charging ready requirement and it relates to any newly built car park be it public or private and it states that while you don't necessarily have to build all the charges from the get-go you must at the very least build the guideways and space required for ev infrastructure so that residents can easily retrofit charges if they want them this ties in nicely with the second policy which is called the right to charge law which states that no resident can be denied the right to plug in their car or fit a charger if they want one nice oh it's horrible [Music] right that was a lot of serious sensible infrastructure chats just then so let's have some light relief now it's time ladies and gentlemen for the scarcely believable yet absolutely true aha story in 1990 the lead singer of norwegian synth pop sensation aha a chat by the name of morton harkitz jumped into his ev converted fiat panda with a couple of his band mates and set off on a road trip around norway the trip was a protest of norway's existing ev policy which he felt did nothing to incentivize driving a zero emission vehicle during their trip they willfully refused to pay norway's infamously expensive road tolls because they felt that electric vehicles should be exempt they parked illegally wherever they could because they felt electric vehicles should park for free and they ignored every single fine that came their way after a while the authorities caught up with them and confiscated the panda and put it up for auction to pay off the fines the thing is no one really wanted to buy a crusty diy converted fiat panda so only one person showed up to the auction morton harketts he bought the panda back and the road trip resumed and depending on who tells this story that happened multiple times he thought he kept on taking his car away just bought it back and carried on eventually the authorities clocked on that he was taking the piss and didn't put the car up for auction the road trip was over but not before morton's campaign had attracted national attention later that year norway became the first country anywhere in the world to offer zero purchase tax on electric vehicles and many more incentives followed shortly after free parking in various car parks no road tolls now many of these incentives have been rolled back slightly in subsequent years evs do now pay road tolls but only up to 50 and here in oslo it's even less than that but they're all still in place and it all started with that bloke from our heart oh silly old job this up next it was time for a visit to city hall for a chat about the government and their role in norway's incredible ev uptake but first we popped our heads into neo house which is directly across the road from city hall neo is part of a new wave of very impressive chinese ev brands looking to capitalize on our western oem's sluggishness in transitioning to electric and take over the european market and unsurprisingly they've all opted to start their european campaigns here in lucky loving norway another perk of being europe's leaders in electrification you get to play with the cool new toys before everyone else [Music] i like your parliament yeah this is our parliament this is where the politicians decide everything so in a nutshell how much of the credit do those guys get for the uptake of evs in the city or is it just that everyone in norway decided of their own to buy one well of course it's the politicians should get a lot of the credit uh it's been a lot of pressure groups we are one of them that have been pushing for strong policies but in the end it's politicians that have decided to have strong eevee policies for many years unlike a lot of other countries that have had it for a short period of the time maybe norway has kept them since early 1990s where they started with tax exemptions and not just tax exemptions but also putting higher taxes on polluting cars so it's not just about giving a nice big discount to people that want to buy electric cars it's not really a discount at all is it it's a tax break simultaneously that tax is being ramped up for ice cars just making them so expensive that it doesn't make sense to buy yeah so the very high purchase taxes on a new car in norway and if it depends on the weight and the emissions of the car how high the tax is but a fully electric car are exempt the bad purchase tax and as well the v80 which is 25 in norway addition to this it's a lot of local incentives as well initially there were free public parking passing the tolls was free we have lots of tall roads in norway coming into oslo for example but also on main highways and access to ferries for free and so on today it's more of a rebate so parking publicly or or use passing at all is cheaper for a full electric car than other cars [Music] of course it's not just the cars that have gone electric in oslo the ferries are electric now too the little speed boats that you can rent to drive around the fjords are electric and the city is strewn with rentable electric scooters and bicycles because it's not just about convincing everyone to buy electric cars it's about convincing people not to use their cars wherever possible to that end a couple of years ago oslo removed almost all the parking spaces from the centre of town and closed the load of roads off to cars in an effort to make the city centre more peaceful and friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists but wait there's more because it isn't just modes of transport going green in oslo this is perhaps the most powerful demonstration of how deeply committed to clean energy the city of oslo is this is a zero emission building site all of the machinery is electric and the methods of construction have been rethought in order to use less energy for example instead of digging a big long hole when fitting a new water pipe they dig a little small hole and push the pipe through using a special machine big piles of soil like these ones just behind the camera which normally would be thrown out and then new earth brought in that's all going to get reused and what are they building here we're building a nice big green sculpture park there's a stream just up the hill somewhere over there which is a bit dammed up and clogged and dirty at the moment it's being cleaned and that water is going to run through the park there are multiple sites like this across oslo right now here's my favorite fact just next door is a nursery most building sites in oslo have to stop between 11 and 1 every day because that's nap time in nursery schools this one doesn't because it's quiet our time in oslo was running out so it was time for one final chat with my new bff christina about the future and that so tell me christina oslo norway in general is so far ahead of the rest of the world but still plenty of work to do what do you see as the big remaining obstacles what still needs to change in order to achieve carbon neutrality in the city well we we do have the cars the incentives are i think they will be in place uh long long enough for this to happen the politicians are eager to to make this happen people are ready they're buying evs so the only challenge that's left is is charging stations and getting enough of chargers up both where people live but also uh fast chargers so that people that go on on longer trips have easy access to to charging on the way sometimes i i i wonder why other countries are so slow because the technology is here we have the technology it's still a bit more expensive so that's why we need politicians to make it competitive that's not that difficult when we think about how quickly we need to reduce co2 emissions i can't believe other countries don't adopt what norway is doing or do something similar faster we should really stop selling cars that cannot run on renewable fuels [Music] so what do we conclude from all this how has norway been so successful in killing off sales of new petrol cars and what can the rest of the world learn well for me it's all thanks to that bloke from our heart no not really although the fact that he was protesting lack of ev incentives in the 90s the fact that the first ev incentives came in in the 90s at least suggests that the average norwegian person was paying attention to zero emission vehicles much sooner than the rest of us maybe it's something to do with being surrounded by all this beautiful untouched nature maybe it's something to do with scandinavian collectivism that means that the average norwegian person is a bit more alert to climate change than the average brit for example maybe but there is a simpler and much more obvious reason why so many people are buying new electric cars here it's because the government has made doing so the obvious choice they've put charges absolutely everywhere they've ensured that even if you live in a tower block you can still get a charge and above all else they have made buying a new electric car so much more financially viable than buying an equivalent petrol model that unless you're filthy rich you barely have a choice and here's the thing no one is complaining because once you buy an ev you realize that evs are fantastic and once lots of people buy evs you realize that all of a sudden your city feels cleaner quieter more peaceful it's all about the policy makers only they can ensure we have enough charges and that buying an ev is even a realistic option for most people and in most parts of the world nowhere near enough is being done in the uk so far this year 17 of new cars sold are bevs 17 and yet we're already rolling back our ev incentives like it's job done here at fully charged we've spent a lot of time myself included bashing car brands for not doing their bit for building too many expensive over-the-top evs and not enough small cheap simple ones and that's true but actually norway is proof that even with that being the case mass ev adoption is achievable right now with proper legislation not five years from now not 10 years from now but today so if you're watching this and you're wondering what can i do to help accelerate the energy transition where i live write to your local politician tell them to pull their finger out and vote for the party that are promising to make the right changes please make sure to like and subscribe and if you have been thank you for watching [Music] well i hope you enjoyed that and i think you would also enjoy this very relevant to the topic here is our latest video up there you can subscribe to fully charged at no cost or commitment from you and here is our patreon link have a look see what you think

Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 769,983

Keywords: electric car youtube channel, why should i buy an electric car, green energy comment, grid storage technology, renewable energy youtube, new transport ideas, green technology review, renewable energy comment, renewable energy electric vehicles, electric vs ice cars, latest news on renewable energy, crowd funded youtube, kryten, fully charged show live, ev show, fully charged show, robert llewellyn, electric cars, fully charged

Id: OJtzuZIO-88

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/NunoFranciscoCardoso]

most of those points are not true anymore.

Source: I live in Norway and I own an electric car.

[u/Radium]

It was Bjorn, really.

[u/Mutiu2]

1) Worlds highest petrol taxes and petrol prices 2) No purchase tax on electric cars 3) No road use tax on electric cars 4) No road tolls or ferry fees on electric cars 5) Free street parking for electric cars until last year. Still subsidised now. 6) Free charging for electric cars at publicly owned charging stations until last year. Still subsidised now.

No need to click bait.

Most countries refuse do do the first and last one. Because lobbyists bribes to politicians.

[u/DaddyCardano]

TLDR: Electric cars are becoming more and more common and manufacturers are starting to make more EVs and discontinuing ICEs not because EVs are superior, but because the government basically forces companies to do so with rebates, fees, taxes, and emission regulations getting stricter.

This pretty much goes for every country though.

[u/MiddleAgedGrump]

Since the drive to switch to E.Vs began, what's been the change in air quality in cities like Oslo?

[u/upper-cloud-9]

but I'm always told if you don't tax electric cars, there will be no money for the roads!