Electric cars accounted for almost 80% – a new world record – of new passenger car registrations in Norway in 2022, AFP reports.

Last year, 138,265 new electric cars were sold, i.e. 79.3% of the total sales of private vehicles, according to a press release from the Road Traffic Information Council. At the top of the ranking is Tesla, with 12.2% market share.

Thus, Norway, which is both a large producer of hydrocarbons and a champion of zero-emission cars, broke its own record set in 2021 (64.5%).

By comparison, electric cars represented 8.6% of new registrations in the first nine months of 2022 in the European Union, according to Agerpres.

In December alone, electric cars accounted for 82.8% of sales in Norway, with many Norwegians rushing to buy ahead of a tax change that will make these purchases more expensive.

Tesla’s Model Y accounted for 11.5% of sales, with the Elon Musk-owned group boasting that it had beaten the sales record set in 1969 by the legendary Volkswagen Beetle.

Norway aims for all its new cars to have zero emissions – electric or hydrogen – starting in 2025, thanks in particular to very favorable taxation.

But with the maturation of this market segment, the authorities began to reduce some of the benefits that seriously affected public finances. Starting from January 1, the VAT exemption (25%) for the purchase of a new electric vehicle is valid only within the limit of a purchase price of 500,000 crowns (approximately 47,500 euros), the amounts exceeding this ceiling being subject to taxation.