Norway plans to completely abandon gasoline-powered cars
“By 2025 it is quite possible to completely get rid of diesel and gasoline cars, fully switching to an environmentally friendly alternative,” said one of Venstre's leaders, Ola Elvestuen, in an interview with news agency NTB. According to the Norwegian politician, the necessary prerequisites for abandoning traditional fuel vehicles have already been created in his country. All that remains is to spur on the process that has already begun.
As reported by Novye Izvestiya, as of May 2015, among all private cars in the land of fjords, 15.5% were electric vehicles. In May 2014, it was 10.9%. The initiators of Norway's switch to electric traction believe that by next year it is quite realistic to increase the share of environmentally clean cars to a quarter of the entire fleet, and by 2020 they will be almost half. “We are not going to act through rough coercion. The carrot-and-stick method in its softest form will help achieve the set goal,” believes Elvestuen.
The “carrot” lies in the electric vehicle support program already adopted by the authorities of Oslo, Trondheim, and several other Norwegian cities. Their owners are provided with free parking spaces at municipal lots, they can drive in lanes reserved for public transport, battery charging is free, and municipalities subsidize the construction of a network of charging stations (only in Oslo, 500 units are to appear by the end of the year).
As for “dirty” cars, sanctions are already being applied against them. For example, on certain days, cars with diesel engines are banned from entering Oslo; all “dirty ones” must pay a tax for entering the center of the Norwegian capital and a number of other cities. As newspaper Verdens Gang learned, supporters of “soft” stimulation of converting Norwegian motor transport to environmentally friendly fuels defeated the “hawks,” who proposed introducing a ban on the sale of cars with internal combustion engines this year.
“There is nothing fantastic about our intention to abandon gasoline and diesel. After all, in Brazil, 80% of cars run on alternative fuel, which is bioethanol,” commented one of the authors of the upcoming bill, parliamentarian Truls Wickholm, in an interview with Verdens Gang.
Experts from the Department of Nature, after analyzing the government's radical intention, concluded that an “auto revolution” is quite possible. The two and a half million cars with internal combustion engines driving on Norway's roads will painlessly become a thing of the past for society if their replacement with electric cars is included in a broader reform plan. It should include the development of a high-speed rail network, stimulating a reduction in the number and length of people's trips by improving the quality of urban planning, and promoting bicycle trips. All these areas, it is worth noting, have already received state and regional funding.
The implementation of the plans of electric traction enthusiasts is also facilitated by the change in the policy of the world's major automakers in recent years. Not long ago they resisted the transition to alternative fuels. For example, Ford Corporation, which bought a Norwegian factory in 1999 that produced the popular two-seat electric cars Think, soon discontinued their production. Hundreds of cars that were leased were recalled to the United States for destruction, despite protests from users who wanted to buy their “iron horses”.
“The sale of cars will bring a profit of 4-5 million dollars, which will not cover the costs of creating a service system and building factories for producing spare parts,” Ford explained its actions to angry Norwegians, who saw in this act another episode of a drawn-out drama of driving eco-friendly cars out of the market. Today Ford and other auto giants have realized that it is useless to “spit against the wind” and are competing with each other for the growing market of electric cars and hybrids.