As opposed to the Netherlands, Norway has an abundance of hydro electric power to fuel the cars and significant oil and gas income that can easily finance these policies.

> and uh... Tesla I suppose

Are Teslas popular in Norway?

Norway just keeps winning when it comes to energy. I suppose it's a good thing because it is cold up there.

How much of their imported goods are produced in countries with dirty energy?

People make all sorts of assumptions about increased grid pressure that come with electrifying the economy. It's true that we'll consume more energy overall but not that we'll have to get all of that with new generation.

A few broken assumptions here that are common:

- The existing system is 100% efficient. It's not. We have a lot of non utilized generation that is effectively discarded. Windmills that are not milling aren't generally broken but turned off because there is over production. In the same way, a lot of solar energy is not consumed and lost. We have electricity cables that are not running at full capacity. And so on.

- Existing fossil energy needs to be replaced with the same amount of electrical energy. Michael Liebreich refers to this as the primary energy fallacy (as opposed to final energy). The mistake here is that a lot of fossil fuel energy is effectively used to heat the universe rather than do anything useful. About a third or less is useful (final energy). The two thirds that are lost don't need replacing. An EV is much more efficient with its energy than an ICE car. That's why you can get the same mileage with only about 2-3 gallons of petrol worth of battery capacity. Reason: petrol engines produce mostly heat and a little bit of movement. So, the 20 gallons that go in a car mostly don't move the car. In the same way, a heat pump is way more efficient than burning gas is.

- The added load is constant and people have no control over when to consume energy. This too is nonsense. We are conditioned to think like that. But we have batteries and a lot of other technology now that can be charged when energy is cheap and discharged when it is not. Also, we can use pricing to stimulate people to optimize when they buy power and charge their batteries. A lot of new energy load is flexible. Cars can charge at night or during the middle of the day. Data centers can play with pricing to stimulate people to shift loads when energy gets more expensive. We're producing batteries by the multiple twh per year. There will be tens / hundreds of twh available to charge/discharge at moments of our choosing. That's why gas plants are being marginalized by grid batteries.

For EVs it's actually very simple. They need energy. The total amount of energy needed is a function of the amount of distance driven. About 3-4 miles per kwh is common. For Norway, trucks and cars drive a combined ~30 billion miles per year. So, if all that becomes electric and you assume a conservative 2 miles per kwh, it needs about 15 billion kwh or 15twh per year. Maybe a bit more. Let's call it 20twh. Norway's grid generates 157 twh/year. So, we're talking about ~10-15% of total energy generation. With pricing, batteries, etc. they can probably nudge that around peak energy demand in e.g. evenings and mornings to make the existing system more efficient. Also, this does not happen overnight. New cars are electric. But they still have a lot of older vehicles. It will be quite a few years before all traffic is electric. So, this isn't a shock to the system but more of a very gradual, predictable shift with a lot of potential for efficiency improvements along the way.

It's the same everywhere else. This is what a great investment opportunity looks like. Norway got clued in earlier than most countries; indeed helped by the massive amounts of clean energy they have.

Others should be able to benefit as well. IMHO, the economics are clear enough at this point that oil companies should start calculating their year on year demand declines for petrol/diesel. It's no longer a growth business. China did in fact import about 10% less diesel year on year last year. Like the shift to EVs this is a gradual decline. Not a system crash. Not yet. I do expect this to accelerate massively as the economics improve.

Our economy is modern in that it has been reorganized to divert tax revenue unemployed migrants, thus driving up the living cost for taxpayers. There have also been various other initiatives that have significantly driven up the electricity cost and made industry almost entirely non-viable. 10/10 Labour government. Top A #1 top economy. Amazing Inflation creation capabilities and expertise. Everything is better except for the things which are worse which is everything.

Except it is remote and flat land is scarce and very expensive.

Unfortunately we're here selling ourselves too cheap. Municipalities gets blinded by big tech asking for cheap electricity and land and give them all they want, thinking it will lead to massive activity, affluent jobs etc. But after everything is built, there's a few janitors left and it's all controlled from abroad. But now the citizens pay more for their electricity, and have to build new water facilities to deal with the water usage from the centers.

Every new technology starts with adoption by the most affluent: cars, telephones, TVs, computers, internet, etc.

With those being able to afford when economies of scale didn't kick into very high gear yet enables products to grow into those scales, and less affluent consumers to afford them.

So yes, it's an outlier, it's also a sign of a new technology taking hold.

Society generally moves towards affluence, so it's an interesting bellweather.

There are other affluent countries that doesn't do nearly as well, so there's more to it than that.

> Qatar’s EV Market reported an impressive surge, with YTD sales up to September up by 119.6%. However, it remains under 2% of total light vehicle sales, with demand still lagging behind. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to scale up EV adoption in the future, establishing the goal to reach an EV share of 10 percent of domestic sales by 2030

https://www.focus2move.com/qatari-new-vehicles/

> In 2024, electric or plug-in hybrid cars made up 28% of new registrations in Switzerland (compared with 30% in 2023). This was the first setback for such vehicles after steady growth since 2015.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-solutions/electric-car-...

Norway has abundant hydropower. But like you've mentioned, this transition will happen in Australia and US, it might just take longer due to incentives.

Particularly for the Southern US, I feel that the costs will continue to drop until the transition will be very sudden, and there will be a rude awakening of sorts.

Norway already had cheap, clean electricity thanks to hydro, so it makes sense they would lead on EVs and heat pumps.

Yeah, the problem isn't panels, but installing them indeed.

Costs for installation and certification in Italy is around 8 times the cost of the panels.

Panels costs are irrelevant nowadays.

The best scenario would be to focus on technology that makes it trivial to connect to your home grid so people would be able to do it on their own safely.

If you compare Norway to other countries, you should always keep in mind that Norway is just blessed with energy. They have more hydropower than they consume, so electrifying everything just makes sense, even if you ignore consequences for climate and environment. They also have their own oil, and electrification will also allow them to sell more of it abroad or keep in the ground for future generations.

However, it also helps that they are good at long term planning.

> If anything I'm surprised that this is happening in an area that hasn't benefited as much from dramatic reductions in electricity costs

Electricity has been comparatively cheap (to DK at least) for a long time due to all the hydro.

I remember as a kid when visiting family in Norway, we were surprised that there were no rules on turning off the lights when closing the door to an empty room :)

Electric air transport is unlikely to happen for commercial transport.

If you replaced 5500 kilograms of fuel with 5500 kilograms of modern batteries, you would need an improvement in battery efficiency of around 20 times. Batteries increase in small % over decades, not by magnitudes.

Essentially, you would need batteries that store 20 times as much energy as the best technology does now at the same weight and density.

And there's another catch: airplanes burn less fuel as they travel, because burning tons of fuel make them lighter. So it's not really a 1:1 comparison and you likely need more than 20 times to compensate.

There's other catches: cooling such batteries would be an engineering nightmare, but safety would be another concern.

What about ferries?

With V2G a large EV fleet would actually stabilize the grid.

>noisy

Uhhh..

There's a separation between how many cars we should have and what kind of cars those should be.

I'd argue rather than go too far, now-ish is the right time to start addressing the issues you raise around reducing car culture.

Cars are not going away, there is one statement that ensures it:

As public transport improves, traffic decreases, and the value a car provides increases.

A 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front because everyone else took the bus/train? Sign me up.

Well, the easy path would have been to keep burning fossil fuels because they have plenty.

Just like the fact I can't stop my neighbours from littering but I can certainly control my own behaviour.

What would you like Norway to do? It's been more successful than other countries (generally speaking) insulating its economy from Oil. Would it be better to _not_ also try to drive adoption of clean energy?

Subsidies where needed 10 years ago, today the US and EU have to put massive tariffs on mass produced, cheap, superior EVs to keep their own ICE auto industry alive.