On Thursday evening, it will be almost three times as expensive to charge the electric car in Oslo

The city council in Oslo decided on Wednesday to increase the rates for charging at municipal charging points. The price increase is up to 170 percent.

– The price jump is so high that in the worst case it can be twice as expensive to drive a zero-emission car as a petrol or diesel car. Here they choose to punish those who have followed the city council’s call to choose zero emissions, says Morten Edvardsen (Sp) to Avisa Oslo.

The increases come into effect as early as midnight on Thursday 8 December.

Edvardsen points out to the newspaper that street charging is home charging for those who do not have their own parking space in the city, and he fears that this will cause people to opt out of zero-emission cars.

The Electric Vehicle Association is also concerned.

– With these prices, we do not recommend people in Oslo who depend on street charging to switch to electric cars, says general secretary Christina Bu of the Electric Vehicle Association to elbil.no.

– Oslo municipality can simply forget about reaching its climate goal of removing all polluting cars from the roads with this policy. This is such a bad plan that it is almost well done, she continues.

Third increase this year

This is the third time in a year that Oslo municipality has increased the prices for street charging.

On 1 July this year, the price for the cheapest charging period, from 8pm to 9am, was doubled.

At the time, the City Environment Agency justified the increases with a general increase in all parking rates in the city.

Now the reason is the strong increase in electricity prices.

– Those who charge electric cars have so far paid less than what the municipality has paid for the electricity. With the changes in rates, what you pay will to a greater extent reflect the expenses the municipality has for offering charging in municipal space, writes Oslo municipality in a press release.

These will be the new prices:

If the price of electricity changes significantly, the tariffs can be changed again, either up or down.

As of today, you pay for the time the car is parked and charging. The Norwegian Environment Agency is working on developing a system where you pay for the actual consumption of electricity for charging.