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Electric car breaks all sales records in Norway

Tesla Model S outside Nikel on Russia's Kola Peninsula. The car drives perfectly well even with an outside temperature of minus 17 degrees Celsius.

1,493 Tesla Model S were sold in March, making it the most ever sold car during the course of a month.

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There is a boom, or a game-changer, in the sales of electric cars in Norway. Never before in history has one model, whatever fuel power, sold more in one month than the Tesla Model S did in March. And Tesla is not unique on the list; Nissan’s electric Leaf is No. 3 with 425 sold cars.

Electric cars counted for 20,3 percent of all new car sales in Norway, according to the statistics from the Information Council for Road Traffic.

With 10,8 percent of all new cars, Tesla Model S sold more than twice as many cars as the second-best seller on the list, the Volkswagen Golf (624). The two smaller electric cars Volkswagen up! and BMW i3 are No. 9 and No. 13 on the March sales list.

Norway gets world-wide attention because of its aggressive drive to incentivize electric cars. Famous for its high taxes on cars, Norway makes it the other way around with electric vehicles. You can buy all brand new electric cars without tax, the nation also provides for free of charge drive through all toll plazas, cities like Oslo and Bergen provides for free parking in the centers and on top of that you get free charging at a numerous fast speed chargers around the country.

Food-store chain KIWI this week announced establishing free chargers at the parking slots outside all their stores in Norway, hoping to attract electric car customers to their stores.

All electric cars in Norway have number plates that start with “EL” - showing that this car is electric and can drive free of charge through toll plazas and park for free.

Among the Norwegians that have bought the zero-emission electric Tesla are newly appointed NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and Crown Price Haakon.

How the electric cars work in freezing cold Arctic winter temperatures in the Barents Region? Read this article and see how BarentsObserver together with Frederic Hauge, head of the environmental group Bellona, drove from Kirkenes on top of Norway to Murmansk on Russia’s Kola Peninsula.