Tesla sets Norway's annual car sales record

By Marie Mannes

STOCKHOLM, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Electric-vehicle maker Tesla has sold more cars in Norway in 2025 than any other automaker ever did in a full year, registration data showed on Monday, beating the country's annual sales record with one month to spare in a rare bright spot for CEO Elon Musk.

Led by the mass-market crossover Model Y, Tesla's sales in Norway rose 34.6% year-to-date, overcoming a consumer backlash against the brand in much of Europe over Musk's support for far-right parties and his backing of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Tesla registered 6,215 new cars in Norway in November, bringing its January-November tally to 28,606 and surpassing a full-year record of 26,575 set by Volkswagen in 2016, according to the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV).

Norway's overall car sales rose by 70% year-on-year in November as buyers rushed to dealerships ahead of a planned hike in EV taxes from January, with Tesla seeing an almost threefold increase compared to the same month of 2024.

"There is a bit of a car bonanza in Norway at the moment," OFV's CEO Geir Inge Stokke told Reuters. 

Fully electric vehicles accounted for 97.6% of all new cars sold in the Nordic nation last month, registrations show, in line with a long-held aspiration in Norway of ending the sale of petrol and diesel combustion engines in 2025.

By contrast, the Texas-based automaker's global deliveries are expected to decline 7% this year, according to Visible Alpha, a research consultancy, with European sales down about 30% through October and declining again in November, the continent's most recent registration data shows.

Tesla's standing in Norway, built amid heavy subsidies for EVs, made the country a small but important part of the company's emergence as a leading carmaker, becoming its first market outside of North America more than a decade ago.

Sales of the Model Y dropped at the start of the year in Norway, but quickly rebounded from the second quarter with the launch of a long-awaited upgrade.

($1 = 10.1630 Norwegian crowns)

(Reporting by Marie Mannes, editing by Terje Solsvik and Rod Nickel)