The Norwegian EV policy : a local-level study on the impact of subsidies

2019

Norway is the country in the world having the highest percentage of electric vehicles on the

roads, with a stunning 31.2% market share in 2018 (Karagiannopoulos and Solsvik, 2019).

Part of the reason behind such high numbers can be attributed to the peculiar system of

incentives in place, which makes the purchase of a BEV not only environmentally but also

financially convenient for the average Norwegian driver. Incentives can be classified into two

categories: the ones bearing the same impact nationally, deemed as “national incentives” and

the ones bearing different effects depending on the municipality, deemed as “local incentives”.

A few studies have studies both the Norwegian and the international markets, suggesting that

the importance of subsidies varies greatly, and that some of them are simply more efficient in

bringing results than others. The main purpose of this study is therefore to understand how the

local incentives helped shaping the market for EVs and which, among them, are the ones

bearing the most prominent effect, at least in the Norwegian case. To reach this objective a

multiple regression analysis with municipality-level data from 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 is

performed, and the results show that, among all the variables considered, only two bring a

significant impact in explaining the difference in the share of EV among municipalities: the

presence of a toll road and the share of energy expenses over total gross expenses. For

policymakers this has important implications, as it shows that the most important types of local

incentives are the ones granting EVs free access to toll roads and the ones reducing the price

of energy for EV charging, the latter one being a type of incentive that it is not yet in place,

but that should be considered in a comprehensive EV policy.