SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
While the U.S. and much of Europe are slowly adapting to electric vehicles, 9 out of every 10 cars sold to Norway are electric. The Scandinavian country is seen as an EV paradise. NPR's Rob Schmitz went there to give Norway's EV infrastructure a test drive.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: OK, so I have just got into the driver's seat of my Volkswagen ID.3 here at the rental car agency in Oslo.
For those of us brought up on combustion engines, the battery range is the biggest worry when you switch to electric. You find yourself thinking, where am I going to charge this car?
Looks like the battery has 415 kilometers of range right now, 89% charged. I'm going only about 90 kilometers, so that should be OK. Let's see how this works.
In fact, there are chargers all over Norway, thanks in part to the efforts of Sture Portvik, manager for electromobility for the city of Oslo, who's been putting up chargers since 2007 when the city committed to an electric vehicle future.
STURE PORTVIK: To be honest, it's challenging, but sometimes, I feel a little bit like I'm running after the train, and the train is leaving the platform.
SCHMITZ: Ensuring there are enough electric vehicle chargers spread out along the country 60,000 miles of winding roads that carve into the fjords and mountains of Norway has been top of mind for years, says Portvik. And it might seem strange that Norway, a country whose biggest export is oil and which has no domestic automaker to speak of, would champion the electric car. But Portvik says that's precisely why Norway has gone this route.
PORTVIK: So it was easier to make the more polluting cars more expensive and remove totally the tax on zero-emission vehicles.
SCHMITZ: Most things Norwegians buy incur a value-added tax that equals 25% of the value of each product. Since 2001, Norway's government lifted this tax from all electric vehicle purchases, which meant anyone buying an EV could save tens of thousands of dollars. The government also cut road taxes, ferry prices and parking fees for EV owners by half. Truls Gulowsen, head of Friends of the Earth in Norway, says these incentives worked. New car buyers bought EVs, and suddenly, the global EV industry was looking to Norway.
TRULS GULOWSEN: The Norwegian test market proved that electric vehicles could work and allowed car brands to test and learn, both from charging and from user experience. And the population and government was sort of generally very supportive also because this came into sort of a - as a climate change solution that didn't really need to challenge the oil industry, consumer behavior or anything else.
SCHMITZ: And in some ways, says Gulowsen, Norway has been a victim of its own success. The government recently had to reinstate value added taxes on sales of luxury electric cars that cost more than $47,000 due to a boom in sales of electric Porsch Taycans, and Tesla Xs. And while Norway has tweaked its policies to adjust to this new market, the market has tweaked its services as well. At a Circle K gas station outside of Oslo, Hakon Stiksrud gives me a tour.
HAKON STIKSRUD: We have a car wash here. We have truck fueling. We have fuel. You - we have, you know, EV charging. It's actually the first EV charging site of Circle K history, the first charger in 2011.
SCHMITZ: From 2011 to 2017, this station had a single charger. But then EVs with longer ranges hit the market, and the station built several more chargers to keep up with demand. Now, says Stiksrud, Circle K has 700 chargers at more than 200 stations inside of Norway. And he says, this has changed how Circle K designs its stations.
STIKSRUD: When the EV drivers come and charge, they do it also for a break. And what we see is that they convert more often to the store than average customer. They buy a higher basket, and they buy higher margin products, such as food.
SCHMITZ: Circle K stations with chargers have a seating area with booths for longer waits. They've got Wi-Fi and more outlets for charging laptops. Despite this, taxi driver Gulfam Raja decides to stay in his car while it's charging. While he waits, he complains about Oslo's new rule that all taxis are required to be electric.
GULFAM RAJA: In the wintertime, I think I have to charge two times a day between my 10-hour shift. And every time when I'm going to charge, it will take me between 30 minutes to 1 hour. And if I lost two hour of my working time, it's some money, you know?
SCHMITZ: Raja says he wishes he had a gas-powered car not only because it takes him only 3 minutes to refuel, but...
RAJA: When you fill your tank, if the car says that you can drive 500 kilometer with a diesel car, it will give you 550 or 600. But when the electric car shows you that it will give you 500 - but in reality, it will give you, like, 250 - maybe 200, 250 - in the wintertime.
SCHMITZ: Oslo electromobility guru Sture Portvik says he has heard complaints like this before, but he says, taxi drivers like Raja should focus on changing their behavior. Yeah, it's going to hurt a little bit, he says, but we all have to do it. And he says Norway's next goal is not focused on EVs at all. It's about getting more and more people on public transportation and persuading Norwegians to walk and bike more, returning transport to its carbon-free basics. Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Oslo.
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