Norway Has More EV Charging Ports Than Gas Nozzles?

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Norway is a world leader in electric vehicle adoption. Visit Norway calls the northern European nation the “EV Capital of the World.” Almost 89% of all new cars sold in Norway in 2024 were electric. The Norwegians seem to understand that fossil fuels are harmful. “But the strongest incentive may be that we heavily tax the purchase of polluting petrol and diesel cars,” says Christina Bu, secretary general of the Norwegian Electric car association.”

How many public EV chargers are there in Norway? The answer appears to be at least 27,500, and there are probably more because this stat may be dated already. 

Compared with the number of fuel nozzles, the number of public EV chargers is likely already more than the number of those. There are about 1,800–2,000 gas stations in Norway. The Google AI Overview stated most European gas stations have 6 to 16 nozzles. If each gas station in Norway has about 12 fuel nozzles and there are 2,000 stations, the total number of fuel nozzles is 24,000 or so.

Now, the total number of EV charging ports doesn’t stop at over 27,000, because there are also home chargers. There may be about one home charger per EV in Norway, so if there are well over 750,000 EVs in Norway that means there are hundreds of thousands of home EV chargers. Therefore, the number of EV charging ports in Norway is easily much greater than the number of fuel pump nozzles.

There are some people who try to smear electric vehicles by claiming they only run on electricity generated by fossil fuel power plants, which is not true.

In Norway, over 98% of electricity there is generated by hydropower and wind power. So, all the EVs in Norway are running on almost entirely clean electricity. (None of the internal combustion engine vehicles are running on clean energy, and that includes the hybrids which use fossil fuels.) There is an interesting parallel with British Columbia which has a similar amount of clean electricity, so all the EVs there are also running on almost entirely clean electricity. (Norway has far more EVs, though.)

Norway sounds like a great place to take a road trip in an electric vehicle. In looking at the Rick Steves website, there is a forum post about this very experience. “We are on an Electric Car road trip in Southern & Central Norway right now! Easy, easy. There are many brands of chargers all over (some easier to use than others, as in USA). And the distances aren’t nearly as far as you think. Our VW ID.4 is getting charged every other day…only just because we can. Often it doesn’t need it, and we’re driving several hours/day. Key point: We ain’t driving USA highway speeds…so a couple hours is maybe 150km, and the car can easily drive 400km. Just do it. And have fun.”

A final point is that politicians such as Donald ‘Fossil Fuels’ Trump can try to set back the EV Revolution and clean energy in the US, but they can’t stop it outside their own home countries. Norway and British Columbia are world leaders in sustainable transportation and clean energy. They don’t need any help from the US or the other richest countries because they make their own decisions and lead themselves. US Republicans can not ruin clean energy and electrified transportation in other countries, try as they may to ruin it at home.