

Tesla's $110,000 Model S is now Norway’s best-selling car - austenallred
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/new-cars/auto-news/teslas-110000-model-s-is-now-norways-best-selling-car/article14739655/

======
sbrekken
The article fails to mention a bunch of other benefits of owning an electric
in Norway:

\- No annual road tax and virtually no sales tax

\- You're allowed to drive in the bus lane which is huge for suburb
communters.

\- Free communal parking

\- Free passage through tolls and ferries

\- Free charging at communal charging stations (they're everywhere in Oslo)

~~~
thomasfl
Besides: \- Norway has the highest taxes anywhere on buying and using gas
cars. Horsepower and weight is taxed heavily. \- Urban sprawl around the
biggest cities has created some of Europe's worst traffic congestions. It's a
huge benefit to be able to use the bus lane.

Teslas high market share in Norway is also a symptom of some of the challenges
we face here in Norway.

~~~
vidarh
I find the idea of "urban sprawl" in Norway hilarious.... I'm from Oslo, but
live in a London suburb that is larger than the "urban sprawl" around Oslo.
Norwegians for the most part has no idea what proper congestion looks like.

~~~
davedx
Yeah, when I visited Oslo we walked at a leisurely stroll from Maridalsvannet
just outside the city back to our city centre hostel in a couple of hours (me,
my sister and my 60 yo mother). In about the same time in London I can get
from the Thames to Tufnell Park, not even close to the North Circular :)

Of course, many of the world's capitals pale in comparison to cities like
London or NYC...

------
SuperChihuahua
Electric cars in Norway:

\- Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric, the same number in
US is 0.1 percent.

\- The number of electric cars on the Norwegian roads today is 7 000, and the
total amount of cars is 2.4 million. The neighboring country Sweden has 4.4
million cars, but only 600 of those are electric.

\- About 40 percent of those who own an electric car also own a gasoline car.

\- The goal of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association is to have 100 000
electric cars in Norway within year 2020.

\- The Norwegians have earlier tried to produce electric cars through the
company Think Global. For the fourth time in twenty years, the company filed
for bankruptcy in 2011.

~~~
svantana
> \- Three percent of all cars sold in Norway are electric

Even better, that number is already outdated - the article states that the
Model S has a 5.1% market share already.

It should be noted though that the Norwegians can afford to be environmental -
they make ridiculous amounts of money from their offshore oil fields. Also,
they have plenty of cheap electricity from hydro.

~~~
hrkristian
That is a misnomer. Oil accounts for about 22% of our GDP. Fact is, GDP per
capita is only so much higher than that of the US, about 10% I'd say.

We can "afford to be environmental" the same way any country would be able to
afford to be. The real difference is our wealth distribution which is leaps
and bounds ahead of most of the world, here in Norway a higher percentage of
the population are simply able to afford the car and that is what we're seeing
in Tesla's market share.

~~~
sspiff
Also, having access to cheap oil/your own oil is probably not the best
stimulus for electrical car ownership, so I think there's definitely more
going on than that :)

~~~
icefox
Buying gas in norway is way more expensive that in the US.

Edit: About $9.30 per gallon (using 14.83 nok per liter in dollars per gallon
via google)

~~~
sspiff
Only because it is placing heavy taxes on fuel (which I think is a good
thing). Compare with other oil-producing nations, which don't do this. Also,
the US has really low gas prices.

------
capisce
A big reason for the Tesla Model S being the best selling car last month is
that a lot of people have been on waiting lists for months to buy one, and
they only started selling them in August. Not to say that it won't keep
selling well with all the benefits specific to electric vehicles in Norway.

------
hanspeide
I believe this article is inaccurate. A lot of people preordered the Model S,
and a lot of those were delivered and paid for (upfront payment excluded) in
September, which caused the Model S to be positioned in the top of the chart.

------
cstrat
I hope to see the Telsa become a big hit in Australia.

Right now I couldn't have one since my apartment complex wouldn't support
charging - however if the government ran a subsidy program to retrofit
complexes I would definitely look at buying one!

~~~
redact207
Me too, though given the stance the government has taken on climate change and
investment into the future, it's unlikely such subsidies will be significant
or fast coming.

And retrofitting apartments would be great, but again given the track record
with the NBN rollout, you really have to ask how committed they are to
infrastructure projects. Also brown/black outs happen during summer as the
grid struggles to keep up with the increased demand. Adding EC to that? Yeesh.

Tangent: I'm all for EVs, but paradoxically they are really quiet - as in
silent if they're coming up behind you. If you've ever been on the footpath,
turned casually to cross the road only for a cyclist to rush past you out of
nowhere it's really frightening like someone jumping out and yelling "boo".
Can only imagine once we transition away from fossil fuels.

~~~
oblio
Now imagine tens of thousands of mostly quiet, non-polluting cars on a very
crowded high way. It would be amazing for the environment. And for the
neighboring residential areas ;)

------
kayoone
This is the direct result of what happens when similar specced petrol cars are
just way more expensive (taxes) than electric cars.

So if any government wants to embrace the use of ecars, this is one way to do
it! Governments of countries with a healthy car industry would be hesitant to
do this though.

~~~
m_mueller
As a fan of Tesla I'm still skeptical whether tax incentives are the way to go
- the reason is that I'm not yet convinced that battery powered cars are a
sustainable way to replace all the petrol powered ones.

In general it seems to me that internalizing all costs of transport is the way
to go. This would mean higher fuel costs, possibly slightly higher cost of
electric vehicles and also higher cost of public transport. There should be a
clear incentive for people to move as close as possible to where they work, or
to work from home. Some incentives to steer the economy in that direction
could be helpful at first, for example subsidizing company housing or directly
subsidizing people to move close to their job (the higher amount, the closer
the family moves), offsetting high rent in places with lots of work.

~~~
Shivetya
My issue with tax incentives is that they are given without regard to income
level of the buyers. I do not believe tax incentives should be given to the
companies that produce the cars, only to the public who buys them and then
only weighed against income level.

Get the middle class into these electrics, if the rich want them there is no
reason the middle class should subsidize their purchase

~~~
sokoloff
Be careful with that line of reasoning. Rich people respond to tax incentives
more than the middle class in a lot of respects (because they have more
economic freedom), and some of the draw for the upper middle class is that the
Tesla is a rich person's car/status symbol.

Making the rich move back to MB S-class and Porsche 911s and you take away at
least part of the allure for the numerically larger upper-middle class.

Plus, realistically, do you really want to differentially encourage a $75 K/yr
household to buy a car that's not economically rational/healthy for them to
buy? You want more Teslas on the road via incentives? You have to give the
incentives to the people who can afford them...

------
axx
My assumption is, that Tesla gets a lot of "free" marketing because they're
the only "real" electric car company for now.

I'm really happy for them, but i believe that as soon as Mercedes Benz, BMW,
Audi etc. can affort to make "cheap" but great electirc cars, nobody will talk
about Tesla anymore.

In germany, for example, it's really expensive to own a car (insurance etc.)
but it's even more expensive to drive one. You need to pay between 1,36 and
1,85 Euro per Liter (Cars have between 40-70 Liter tanks) and people _still_
don't buy electric cars.

My guess is, that many people trust those big companies and don't want to buy
a expensive car from a company they never heard of. As soon as all those
german companies have a good mass-product solution for electric motors, they
can scale them from an Audi A1 to an Audi A7 and people will buy them
instantly.

~~~
r00fus
> I'm really happy for them, but i believe that as soon as Mercedes Benz, BMW,
> Audi etc. can affort to make "cheap" but great electirc cars, nobody will
> talk about Tesla anymore.

People said the same thing about Google providing the first usable web search,
and their dominance (and the Microsoft would eat their lunch when Redmond
finally got around to it).

I feel the same way about Tesla - the Model S is merely a product that
embodies the company's vision and skilled workforce. Tesla may not yet have a
patent thicket, but they probably have key battery-specific patents as well.

They are busy disrupting the way cars are sold as well (mainly because, in
order to succeed, they have to)… an area that sorely needs disruption.

All of this means that by the time the other manufacturers get around to
building a Model S equivalent, Tesla will have both moved on to better product
as well as entrenched their brand as the leader in the space (not to mention
whatever lock-in that Supercharger stations produce).

Perhaps this will be diminished in Germany which prides itself on it's car
manufacturers, but even Japan gave into the iPhone eventually.

~~~
Gravityloss
It may not be that Tesla is extremely good, but that the others are
inconceivably fumbling in creating decent premium electric cars. And may do
that for many years to come.

Just look at non-apple laptops' trackpads...

~~~
r00fus
You may look at the competition as completely incompetent, or you can look at
the winning team as having a great defensive play.

You would think by now that Tesla would have been body-slammed by some
regulatory agency or paid media shill (though that John Broder hit piece came
pretty close)… maybe Tesla just has good defense in that space.

------
greenyoda
Many versions of this story have already been posted:

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tesla+norway](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tesla+norway)

------
matponta
I was in Oslo last May, saw my first Tesla Roadster... They tell me it's
actually a pretty cheap car - or rather, all other cars are crazy expansive -
because of taxes on internal combustion cars...

~~~
TobbenTM
That, and the USD is quite cheap.

------
chollida1
> One of those secondhand buyers, 27-years-old financial consultant Anders
> Langset, said a regular car with similar performance and engine size could
> have cost him up to 2 million crowns ($330,000) because of the punitive
> taxes Norway’s government levies on cars with big, gas-guzzling engines.

Wow, if that's correct, then good on both the government and people for trying
to move in the direction of gasoline independence.

I guess in Canada and the US we are too intertwined with the car industry to
do something similar.

~~~
timc3
Gasoline independence? You realise that they have large amounts of oil?

~~~
icefox
And they sell that gas to _other_ countries for an nice profit.

------
jeddi
I think Oslo consistently comes in each year as the most expensive city to
live in -- so at $110,000 it may also be Norway's cheapest car.

------
taralx
Does anyone know what's behind this?

Is it that people don't buy a lot of cars in Norway? Average income is
significantly higher? Different income profile of car buyers specifically?
Some kind of social effect, like prestige?

~~~
glesica
Yes, Norway is very, very wealthy. This is a fairly recent development...
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=norway+wealthy](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=norway+wealthy)

~~~
frewsxcv
I don't think it's that recent, I feel like they've been pretty 'wealthy' for
a while. Interestingly, NOK-EUR YTD hasn't been that great
[http://ur1.ca/fuyz4](http://ur1.ca/fuyz4)

~~~
dagw
Recent as in only a generation or so. It the 60s and 70s it was far behind
much of Europe and the US.

~~~
zerr
Yup, it begun when oil was discovered in Norway. So oil + good location
(Europe) == success :)

~~~
brazzy
More specifically: oil + ability and political willingness to exploit it
yourself and share the profits among all citizens.

As opposed to selling exploitation rights to investors to enrich a
kleptocracy.

~~~
zerr
I have an impression that they're are saving oil/profits for some possible
"black day" in the future. And, the "profits" which are shared among all
citizens come from high taxes. I might be [partially] wrong though.

~~~
brazzy
Well, a large part of the oil revenues are put into an investment fund because
the oil isn't going to last forever. Profits of that fund go into the public
budget, though.

According to Wikipedia, there are discussions about how much of the oil
revenues should be saved; opponents of using more of them directly say that it
would just lead to inflation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Government_Pension_Fund_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway)

------
alephnil
One of the main reasons is that ordinary cars are heavily taxed, while
electric cars are not taxed at all. This makes a Model S cheaper than most BMW
or Mercedeses for example.

Add to this that electricity is cheap, while fuel is expensive. Also, Norway's
wealth is relatively evenly distributed while at the same time the GDP is
high. All these reasons makes it affordable for a lot of people to Buy a Tesla
Model S.

While I have seen a few Model S on the road, I can't commute to job without
passing a quite a few Nissan Leaf. Those have been sold in large numbers here
(3% of all cars sold first half of 2013).

------
Gravityloss
Take this with a grain of salt as I read it as a blog comment, but it's been
argued that this is only a temporary thing, because of a pile up of orders for
a long time and now a sudden delivery.

------
frogpelt
Keywords: Punitive taxes.

------
zerr
Interesting. One fellow Norwegian client was assuring me - the country is
rich, but people don't have money. I understood this as one of the perils of
socialism.

~~~
kristofferR
Norway is not a socalistic country, that's just absurd (unless you are on the
right wing of US politics - where everything left of for-profit healthcare is
socialism/marxism/communism).

Our cost of living is often absurdly high though, and the increased wages
can't completely make up the difference (it's AWESOME for travel though).
Therefore we can't afford as much "stuff" as Americans can, but I think it's
worth it due to increased quality of life the Norwegian system brings.

~~~
davidw
> I think it's worth it due to increased quality of life the Norwegian system
> brings.

I visited Oslo a few years back, very briefly, and indeed it did seem like a
very nice and well run place.

But no amount of nice social systems will buy you sunshine, so I'm still here
in Italy.

~~~
kristofferR
True. I despise the Norwegian winter. I'll get through it this year, but I'll
likely find somewhere warmer to be next winter.

The summer in Norway on the other hand is magical. I didn't realize what a
huge privilege is it to be able to chill/drink beer/barbecue in the park the
whole evening and watch the sunset at 23/11PM (or the whole night in the north
of Norway) until I lived in Thailand for a year (where the sun always goes
down around 18-19).

Sure, it's always warm there, but I really missed the long summer nights.
Living far away from the equator has both its advantages and disadvantages.

