Norway marks 5,074 new BEVs sold in February

Norway just released the plug-in vehicle registrations for February, with 5,074 new electric cars talking the lead in February. The market share of EVs in all new passenger car registrations for the month was 47.5 per cent.

Compared to February 2020, the now 5,074 electric cars are actually a slight minus of 1.4 per cent – at that time, there were 5,145 electric cars. However, in the current year, EV registrations are about 12 per cent higher than the 9,381 registrations of 2020 due to the stronger January with 10,535 electric cars.

At 47.5 per cent, the electric car market share in February was slightly lower than in previous months and below 50 per cent for the first time in a long time: in November 2020, it was 56.1 per cent, in December, a proud 66.7 per cent, and in January still 53 per cent.

3,378 plug-in hybrids joined the 5,074 BEVs in Norway in February. The hybrid electric vehicles thus had a market share of 31.6 per cent last month. Compared to February 2020, PHEVs increased by 76.9 per cent. The “non-rechargeable” hybrids, on the other hand, fell by 18.8 per cent and only accounted for 872 new registrations – but their market share of 8.1 per cent was still higher than that of the diesel and petrol models.

If, on the other hand, BEVs and PHEVs are added together, the market share in February was a proud 79 per cent (January: 82 per cent). The market share of pure combustion engines was 12.7 per cent. However, within the electrified drive systems, the PHEVs increased in February, and, as described above, the BEVs lost some ground.

This also becomes clear when looking at the individual models: for the first time in a long time, no BEV model was in the lead in February. The best-selling model in February was the Toyota RAV4 with 749 registrations. The compact SUV is offered as a full and plug-in hybrid. However, the exact distribution of the two powertrains is not known as the Norwegian statistics do not offer a filter option here.

The same applies to the second-placed model, the Volvo XC40: it is listed in the February statistics with 686 new registrations: in addition to the BEV version. However, there are two PHEV drives and various mild hybrid drives. The Audi e-tron, on the other hand, is clear: the best-selling model across all drive types in 2020 in Norway came to 618 new registrations – purely electric vehicles in this case.

Among the pure BEV series, the Polestar 2 followed in February with 422 new registrations, the Nissan Leaf with 394 units and the Tesla Model 3 with 334 vehicles. However, in between, vehicles such as the Peugeot 2008 and Volvo XC60, for which the exact BEV or PHEV shares are again unknown.

Due to the strong January, the Mercedes EQC is behind the Leaf with 624 new registrations this year, but still ahead of the Model 3 – but only 157 EQCs were added in February. This shows how difficult it is to assess Norwegian registration figures every month: It simply often depends on whether a cargo ship has just docked. Tesla is solid in the last month of a quarter, so the “only” 397 Model 3 registrations so far in 2021 compared to the 1,352 e-tron registrations can hardly be assessed. Therefore, we are looking forward to the figures from March for a small interim assessment of the start of the year.

With reporting by Sebastian Schaal, Germany.

ofv.no (statistics), ofv.no (model information, both in Norwegian)