Finance
Tesla sets Norway's annual car sales record
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on December 1, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
Global Banking and Finance Review
Company
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on December 1, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
Tesla breaks Norway's car sales record with Model Y, as EV sales soar ahead of tax hikes. Despite European challenges, Norway remains a key market.
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)
An electric vehicle (EV) is a type of vehicle that is powered by electricity instead of traditional fuels like gasoline or diesel. EVs are known for being more environmentally friendly and often have lower operating costs.
Market share refers to the percentage of an industry's sales that a particular company controls. It is a key indicator of a company's competitiveness and market position.
Consumer backlash occurs when customers express strong negative reactions against a company or brand, often due to perceived unethical practices or controversial actions by its leadership.
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