There is one thing that has been about as certain as clockwork, and that is that the number of passenger cars in Norway has increased every year.
But now new figures from Statistics Norway show that at New Year’s there were for the first time fewer cars in Norway than the year before:
And not only that: There were fewer cars there than the year before, too.
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On the surface, the reason is that while the number of electric cars on the road is increasing relatively quickly, the number of petrol and diesel cars is falling even faster. It is completely in accordance with the Norwegian electric car policy.
Where did the cars go?
When the number of cars falls, one would think that Norwegians are now scrapping their old cars over a low shoe. Instead, the exact opposite happens: We have to go back to 2010 to find that fewer cars were wrecked.
This means that 24,300 more new cars were registered in 2023 than were scrapped.
We therefore find the main reason for the decline in the number of passenger cars to be that for a period it was very attractive to export cars out of Norway.
– In 2023, we exported 40,437 passenger cars. That is more than a doubling from the previous year, said Jan Olav Rørhus in Statistics Norway’s section earlier this year.
From the new year, the regulations for the export of cars were significantly tightened. This meant that far less tax kroner was repaid when exporting the car than was done previously. Figures from Bilbransje24 show that the change roughly halved the repayment.
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These are the most popular brands in Norway
In the table below you will find all car brands that have registered more than 100 cars at the turn of the year.
