The following year Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which created a bevy of incentives for drivers to buy electric and for automakers to invest in EVs.

The mission to replace gas cars with EVs has led to a series of major miscalculations, one of which has to do with the sheer size of the new electric vehicles being put on the road.

EV drivers could get perks like free parking, permission to drive in bus lanes, and, most importantly, exemptions from taxes and fees that could ultimately save them a lot of money.

The problem, Ketan Joshi, a climate-analysis expert in Oslo, told me, is that that stat “doesn’t really give you a good picture of the rate of change.”

Though the new-vehicle sales figure is high, data from Statistics Norway indicates the total share of EVs on Norwegian roads in 2022 was only about 20% — there’s still a long way to go until everyone’s driving electric.

Joshi told me that the decline in gas tax revenue due to EV adoption had triggered a contentious political debate about increasing road tolls to make up the difference.

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