BAMBLE, Norway – About 110 kilometers south of Oslo, along a road lined with pine and birch trees, a gleaming gas station offers a glimpse of a future where electric vehicles rule.
Chargers outnumber gas stations in the service area operated by Circle K, a retail chain that started in Texas. During summer weekends, when Oslo residents escape to the country houses, the line to top up sometimes backs up the exit ramp.
Marit Bergsland, who works at the store, has had to learn how to help frustrated customers hook up to chargers, in addition to his regular duties of flipping burgers and ringing in purchases of salted licorice, a treat popular
“Sometimes we have to give them coffee to calm them down,” he said.
Last year, 80 percent of new car sales in Norway were electric, putting the country at the forefront of the shift to battery-powered mobility. It has also made Norway an observatory to find out what the electric vehicle revolution can mean for the environment, workers and life in general. The country will end sales of internal combustion engine cars by 2025.
Norway’s experience suggests that electric vehicles bring benefits without the dire consequences predicted by some critics. There are problems, of course, such as unreliable chargers and long waits during periods of high demand. Auto dealers and retailers have had to adapt. The shift has reshuffled the auto industry, making Tesla the best-selling brand and marginalizing established automakers such as Renault and Fiat.
But the air in Oslo, Norway’s capital, is measurably cleaner. The city is also quieter as the noisier petrol and diesel vehicles are ruled out. Oslo’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 30 percent since 2009, but there has been no mass unemployment among gas station workers and the power grid has not collapsed.
Some lawmakers and business executives show that the fight against climate change requires serious sacrifice. “With electric vehicles, that’s not the case,” said Christina Bu, secretary general of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, which represents owners. “It’s actually something people embrace.”
Norway started promoting electric vehicles in the 1990s to support Think, a homegrown electric vehicle start-up that Ford Motor owned for a few years. Battery-powered vehicles were exempt from value added and import taxes and motorway tolls.
The government also subsidized the construction of fast charging stations, crucial in a country nearly as large as California with just 5.5 million people. The combination of incentives and ubiquitous charging “removed all the friction,” said Jim Rowan, chief executive of Volvo Cars, based in neighboring Sweden.
The policies put Norway more than a decade ahead of the United States. The Biden administration aims for 50 percent of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, a milestone Norway surpassed in 2019.
A few meters from a six-lane road bordering Oslo’s waterfront, metal pipes protrude from the roof of a prefabricated shed. The building measures pollution from passing traffic, a stone’s throw from a bike path and a marina.
Levels of nitrogen oxides, byproducts of gasoline and diesel combustion that cause smog, asthma and other illnesses, have fallen sharply as electric vehicle ownership has increased. “We are close to solving the NOx problem,” said Tobias Wolf, Oslo’s chief air quality engineer, referring to nitrogen oxides.
But there’s still a problem where the rubber meets the road. Oslo’s air has unhealthy levels of microscopic particles generated in part by the abrasion of tires and asphalt. Electric vehicles, which account for about a third of the city’s registered vehicles but a higher proportion of traffic, may even exacerbate this problem.
“They’re actually a lot heavier than internal combustion engine cars, and that means they’re causing more abrasion,” said Mr. Wolf, who, like many Oslo residents, prefers to get around by bicycle.
Another lingering problem: Apartment residents say finding a place to plug in their cars remains a challenge. In the basement of an Oslo restaurant recently, lawmakers and local residents gathered to discuss the issue.
Sirin Hellvin Stav, Oslo’s deputy mayor for environment and transport, said at the event that the city wants to install more public chargers, but also reduce the number of cars by a third to make the streets safer and free space for walking and cycling.
“The goal is to reduce emissions, which is why electric vehicles are so important, but also to make the city better to live in,” said Ms. Green Party member Stav in a later interview.
The electric vehicles are part of a wider plan by Oslo to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to almost zero by 2030. All city buses will be electric by the end of the year.
Oslo is also targeting construction, the source of more than a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions. Contractors bidding on public projects have a better chance of winning if they use equipment that runs on electricity or biofuels.
In a park in a working-class Oslo neighborhood last month, a bulldozer dug up soil for a decorative pond. A thick cable connected the excavator to a power source, driving its electric motor. Later, an electric dump truck removed the soil.
Normally, the crew would have had to stop working when the children at a nearby kindergarten were taking a nap. But the electrical equipment was quiet enough to continue working. (Children in Norway take naps outdoors, weather permitting.)
Espen Hauge, who manages construction projects for the city, said she was surprised how quickly contractors replaced hard-to-find electrical equipment with diesel machinery. “Some projects that we thought were impossible or very difficult to make zero emissions, we still got the bid for zero emissions,” he said.
Ms. Stav acknowledged what he called the hypocrisy of Norway’s drive to reduce greenhouse gases while producing plenty of oil and gas. Fossil fuel exports generated $180 billion in revenue last year. “We are exporting this pollution,” said Ms. Stav, noting that his party has called for oil and gas production to be phased out by 2035.
But Norway’s government has not scaled back oil and gas production. “We have several fields in production, or in development, that provide energy security in Europe,” Amund Vik, state secretary of Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, said in a statement.
Elsewhere, Norway’s power grid has held up well even with higher electricity demand. It helps that the country has abundant hydropower. Still, electric vehicles have modestly increased demand for electricity, according to calculations by the EV Association, and most owners are charging their cars at night, when demand is lower and power is cheaper.
Elvia, which supplies electricity to Oslo and the surrounding area, has had to install new substations and transformers in some locations, said Anne Nysæther, the company’s CEO. But, he added, “we haven’t seen any issues with the network collapsing.”
There has also been no increase in unemployment among auto mechanics. Electric vehicles don’t need oil changes and require less maintenance than gas cars, but they still break down. And there are many gas cars that will need maintenance for years.
Sindre Dranberg, who has worked at a Volkswagen dealership in Oslo since the 1980s, was trained to service electric vehicle batteries. Was it difficult to make the switch? “No,” he said, as he replaced faulty cells in a Volkswagen e-Golf.
Electric vehicles are creating jobs in other industries. In Fredrikstad, 55 miles south of Oslo, a former steel plant has been converted into a battery recycling center. The workers, including some who worked in the steelworks, disassemble the battery packs. A machine then shreds the packages to separate the plastic, aluminum and copper from a black mass containing crucial ingredients such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite.
The factory, owned by Hydrovolt, is the first of several the company plans to build in Europe and the United States. So far, there isn’t much to recycle, but eventually recycled batteries could greatly reduce the need for mining.
“If we can take the active material that’s already inside the product and create new ones, we create a shortcut,” said Peter Qvarfordt, chief executive of Hydrovolt, a joint venture between aluminum producer Norsk Hydro and Northvolt. a battery manufacturer
If anyone should be worried about their jobs, it’s the car dealers. The almost complete disappearance of petrol and diesel vehicles from showrooms has reordered the industry.
The Moller Mobility Group has long been Norway’s largest car retailer, with sales last year of $3.7 billion and dealerships in Sweden and the Baltic countries. Moller’s Oslo outlet is full of electric Volkswagens like the ID.4 and ID.Buzz. There are only a few internal combustion cars.
However, Tesla is outselling Volkswagen in Norway, taking 30% of the market compared to 19% for Volkswagen and its Skoda and Audi brands, according to the Road Information Council.
Sales of electric cars from Chinese companies such as BYD and Xpeng are also growing. If this pattern is repeated elsewhere in Europe and the United States, some established automakers may not survive.
Petter Hellman, the CEO of Moller Mobility, predicted that traditional brands would regain ground because customers trust them and they have extensive service networks. “But of course,” he added, “Tesla has shaken up the industry.”
Circle K, which bought gas stations once owned by a Norwegian government-owned oil company, is using the country to learn how to serve electric car owners in the United States and Europe. The chain, now owned by Alimentation Couche-Tard, a company based near Montreal, has more than 9,000 stores in North America.
Guro Stordal, a Circle K executive, has the difficult task of developing a charging infrastructure that works with dozens of vehicle brands, each with their own software.
Electric vehicle owners tend to spend more time at the Circle K because charging takes longer than filling a gas tank. This is good for food sales. But gasoline remains an important source of income.
“We see it as an opportunity,” Hakon Stiksrud, Circle K’s head of global electric mobility, said of electric vehicles. “But if we’re not able to take advantage of those opportunities, it quickly becomes a threat.”
