Norway 2020. Car market reports best performance in Europe (-0.7%), while AFV thrive (83.4% share)

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Norway car market
The 2021 Mercedes-Benz GLA35 AMG

Norwegian auto market in 2020 is the best performing in Europe, losing only 0.7%. Full-Year sales have been 141.405, with the highest share of EV sales in the world (83.4%). Mercedes impresses by growing 132.1% and jumping 6 spots.

Market Trend

The Norwegian car market performed incredibly well despite the pandemic. In fact, it is the best performing market in Europe.

The market has deeply changed in recent years by the decision to boost-zero emission vehicle sales and the introduction of a medium terms incentive policy with EV fiscal cost at zero, including VAT and final price for consumers almost equivalent between traditional combustion and AFVs. The result is the fast replacement of petrol-based vehicles with Hybrid or Electric cars.

Norway has taken the decision to stop fossil-fuelled vehicles by 2025. Pushed by the need to renovate, the domestic market grew up from 2012 to 2017 hitting five all-time records in a row, before a moderate decline in 2018 at 149.991 and in 2019 at 142.381. However, the market detains World’s leadership in green vehicle sales.

After starting the year with a positive trend (+6.2%), the market quickly collapsed in March as the virus struck. The sharpest drop in sales this year was in May when sales declined by 39%. Despite being a sharp fall, it was one of the best holds in Europe, and the market recovered very impressively in the following months. Indeed, in the second half of the year, August was the only month to report a loss (-10.5%), while the peak was reached in December, with an incredible growth of 82.8%.

Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2020 have been 141.405, reporting a decline of only 0.7% compared to 2019.

Norway monthly variation in sales 2020
Norway monthly variation in sales 2020

Norway accounts for a whopping and world-best 83.4% electrified vehicle share in 2020 thanks to sales up 21.3% to 117.940. This is to be compared with 68.3% share in 2019, 60.2% in 2018, 52.2% in 2017, 40.2% in 2016 and just 7% in 2012. BEV sales gain 27.3% to 76.804 and 54.3% share vs. 42.4% in 2019, PHEV is up 49.8% to 28.905 and 20.4% vs. 13.5% last year and HEV drops -30.3% to 12.231 and 4.9% share vs. 12.3% in 2019. As a result petrol vehicle sales drop to 8% share vs. 15.7% in 2019 and diesel is down to 8.6% vs. 16%. In December petrol sales accounted for just 2.7% of the Norwegian market and diesel 4.8%.

Brand-wise, this year the leader Volkswagen (+1.7%) gained 0.6% market share, followed by the growing Toyota (-13.6%) -up 1 spot-, which gained 1.2% share. Audi jumped 5 spots and gained an impressive 2.2% share, growing by 38.9%.  BMW remained in 4th place while losing 6.8%, followed by Volvo which lost 6.4%.

Tesla registered the worst performance in the leaderboard by losing 53.5%, followed by Mercedes, the best performer of the year, which climbed 6 spots by growing 132.1%, and Hyundai which fell 1 spot and increased sales by 2.6%. Closing the leaderboard we have Skoda gaining 3% this year and Nissan ending up in last place by falling 4 spots, losing 20%.

The most sold vehicle this year has been the Audi e-Tron (+71.6%) with 9.226 units sold and jumped 3 spots, overtaking the Tesla Model 3, which lost 50.5% registering 7.770 new sales this year. The Volkswagen ID.3 closes the podium with 7.754 units sold.

Tables with sales figures

In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and Top 10 models.

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