> If everyone else switches to EVs, where will Norway get the money for its own EVs?
This question doesn't even make sense. EVs are already cheaper than ICE cars when it comes to Total Cost of Ownership. There are clear signs that we will soon see EVs that are outright cheaper to buy than ICE, and that replacing a battery will be cheaper than replacing an ICE engine.
This whole EV transition isn't something that's costing Norway money. It's an investment which is already paying huge dividends.
Norway is now building the worlds largest undersea tunnel, and they found that due to the high share of EVs in Norway, they could save 30 million dollars on the project due to decreased requirement for active ventilation. There are lots of examples like this.
The number of car fires in Norway is going down, as EVs are ~10-20 times less likely to catch fire. While each EV fire takes a bit more work to put out, it's not 10-20 more work than an ICE.
Norway can already measure significant decreases in air pollution. What impact do you think that has on the public health insurance expenses?
You should also know that Norway's economy is surprisingly diversified for an oil nation. Norway was fairly wealthy before oil, and will still be wealthy after oil. There are still huge natural resources (hydropower, fishing, etc), a fair amount of industry and manufacturing (Hydro, Yara, ..), a decent tech sector. And after all, a lot of the profits from the fossil fuel extraction has been put into one of the worlds largest sovereign wealth funds, which could be used to help bootstrap more industry in the transition away from oil.
Although you're replying to a weird question indeed, your comment makes a lot of claims that doesn't correlate with my observations. Do you have some stats to support this?
> EVs are already cheaper than ICE cars when it comes to Total Cost of Ownership
Are you talking about Norway or in general? Because overall I highly doubt that if we're talking about US/EU markets. In Norway EVs are heavily subsidized and ICEs are on the contrary taxed, so this might be true there. But in Europe ICE cars of comparable class are probably cheaper when looking at TCO, especially given abysmal depreciation of EV batteries. From quick googling it seems that EVs are _sometimes_ cheaper when one factors in tax cuts and/or subsidies and only on the horizon of ~4 years +- one year. Given the average lifetime of a car of ~10 years (now closer to 12), EV will be much, much more expensive than ICE when averaged across population.
EVs are cheaper than ICE cars in China or if they are imported from China without tariffs. Do we really want to go that way?
> save 30 million dollars on the project due to decreased requirement for active ventilation
> The number of car fires in Norway is going down, as EVs are ~10-20 times less likely to catch fire
These sound like a rounding error when estimating net effects of EV vs ICE.
> Norway can already measure significant decreases in air pollution. What impact do you think that has on the public health insurance expenses?
Norway always had exceptionally clean air. I think that this impact is not measurable.
This question doesn't even make sense. EVs are already cheaper than ICE cars when it comes to Total Cost of Ownership. There are clear signs that we will soon see EVs that are outright cheaper to buy than ICE, and that replacing a battery will be cheaper than replacing an ICE engine.
This whole EV transition isn't something that's costing Norway money. It's an investment which is already paying huge dividends.
Norway is now building the worlds largest undersea tunnel, and they found that due to the high share of EVs in Norway, they could save 30 million dollars on the project due to decreased requirement for active ventilation. There are lots of examples like this.
The number of car fires in Norway is going down, as EVs are ~10-20 times less likely to catch fire. While each EV fire takes a bit more work to put out, it's not 10-20 more work than an ICE.
Norway can already measure significant decreases in air pollution. What impact do you think that has on the public health insurance expenses?
You should also know that Norway's economy is surprisingly diversified for an oil nation. Norway was fairly wealthy before oil, and will still be wealthy after oil. There are still huge natural resources (hydropower, fishing, etc), a fair amount of industry and manufacturing (Hydro, Yara, ..), a decent tech sector. And after all, a lot of the profits from the fossil fuel extraction has been put into one of the worlds largest sovereign wealth funds, which could be used to help bootstrap more industry in the transition away from oil.