Video clips: The Norwegians fine life with electric mobility
"It's just fun!"
Lena and her daughter love the peace and quiet of the e-Golf.
Norway is large, sparsely populated and very cold in winter. Not the best preliminary conditions imaginable for electric cars – when you hear all the preconceptions about electric mobility. But Norwegians just don’t listen and even prove Europe wrong: nowhere else is the proportion of purely electric vehicles higher. In 2013, only around 5.5 percent of new registrations were electric – in 2017 it was 20.8 percent.
The reasons for the electric hype around the fjord are not only the tax breaks or the free use of state toll roads and ferries. Norwegians love the feeling of driving electric. Why? Four of them will tell you themselves in a new video series.
Quiet enough to listen
Lena’s daughter is an avid dancer.
The mother supports her 17-year-old daughter and drives her around in an e-Golf. In 2017, the e-Golf was the most-sold electric vehicle in Norway. “The drives are special – a time just for the two of us. We talk about friends and life. It is very pleasant that the car is so quiet”, Lena said in the short video series. They are on the road much of the time: during the week on the way to training and on the weekends heading to competitions. The car charges at home in the garage or during the working day.
Ginge, a musician, also enjoys the quiet in the car.
Around 140,000 electric cars are currently on Norway’s roads. Ginge drives one of them and he admits that he sometimes looks for excuses to get into his e-Golf. “It’s just fun to be in an electric car”, Ginge says, demonstrating in the video how surprised he was by the electric acceleration in the vehicle.
Ginge, who is a composer, demonstrates the e-Golf’s acceleration.
The e-Golf is the most-sold electric vehicle in Norway.
Alternative drives in the fast lane
In 2017, alternative drives overtook conventional drives for the first time: 52.2% of new registrations were vehicles with electric, hybrid, fuel cells or natural gas drives.
“That means that four out of ten new cars in Norway can be powered with renewable energy. The increase was significant; in 2016, it was still three out of ten new registrations”, Christina Bu, the Secretary General of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, Elbilforening, told Norway’s business portal: “As far as we know, that is an undisputed world record.”
Six electric models made it onto the list of the top 20 most-sold passenger vehicles in Norway in 2017. The e-Golf was at the top of the list. More than half of those are fully electric, but if you count plug-in hybrids, then three-quarters of Golf models have a plug.
Norwegians love the outdoors
Thomas admits in the video series that he was sceptical before he sat in an electric car for the first time.
“My minimum requirement was that it deliver the same power as a petrol engine”, the IT manager remembers. “And today, I would never buy another petrol car.”
Driving is one of Thomas’s passions. In his free time, he drives with his family to go snowboarding, skateboarding or fishing. “Protecting the environment is very important to me”, Thomas says; “And as long as your country has enough electricity, then electric mobility is not complicated at all.”
Thomas and his family on their way to the outdoors
Norway generates its power almost entirely from water, which the country has in abundance. Norway has announced its vision to be the first fully electrified society to generate all of its power from renewable energy sources. From 2025, vehicles with combustion engines will no longer be sold in Norway.
1e-Golf (100 kW/136 PS) Electrical consumption in kWh/100 km: combined 12.7, CO2 emissions combined in g/km: 0, efficiency class: A+.