The word has entered common vocabulary in Norway: “ range anxiety “. This anxiety of the autonomy of electric vehicles, Philip Benassi knew it well at the wheel of his Tesla, especially on cold winter days, but like his compatriots, he learned to tame it.
Frequently freezing temperatures, uneven terrain, stretched distances… Norway is not the ideal playground for the electric car, which loses range in freezing weather.
Yet the Nordic country is the undisputed world champion when it comes to the adoption of these vehicles.
Last year, a record: four out of five new cars (79%) were electric in the kingdom, a major oil producer, where the official objective is however to put an end to heat engines for new registrations from 2025. That is ten years before the European Union.
By comparison, all-electric accounted for 12.1% of new car sales in 2022 in the EU, down from 9.1% a year earlier, according to statistics released Wednesday by the European Manufacturers Association.
Commercial in a cosmetics group, Philip Benassi took the step towards electric in 2018. In his gleaming Tesla S, this 38-year-old Norwegian swallows between 20,000 and 25,000 kilometers per year.
Like most new “elbilisters” – owners of an electric car – he, too, experienced early on the anxiety of seeing the battery indicator drop rapidly.
With the specter of falling to zero, the equivalent of running out of fuel, on a deserted country road.
“I didn’t know enough regarding the car. But following all these years, I know roughly how many kilowatts it consumes and that it varies depending on whether it slept outside or in a garage, ”he testifies.
“In winter, battery capacity decreases. If the car has been left outside in temperatures between -10 and -15°C, then we use a lot more battery and it takes quite a while before consumption returns to normal,” he explains.
In the cold season, the loss of autonomy depends on the vehicle model and the severity of the cold snap.
“But the general rule is that a freeze of around -10°C will reduce the range by around a third compared to summer weather and that a severe freeze [-20 °C ou plus] cut it by up to half,” says Finnish consultant Vesa Linja-aho.
“By parking the car in a heated garage, this phenomenon can be somewhat reduced,” adds the expert.
Green taxation
When to recharge? Or ? Of how many ? These questions haunt first-time users. It’s all a matter of habit and planning before long journeys.
The various apps from car manufacturers and Norway’s extensive network of fast and superfast charging points — more than 5,600 — fortunately help solve the equation.
A sign that the problem is far from insurmountable, electric cars accounted for 54% of new registrations last year in Finnmark, the northernmost region of the country. Located in the heart of the Arctic, it holds a national record that sends shivers down your spine: the mercury there fell to -51°C.
Other Nordic countries accustomed to negative temperatures, such as Iceland (33.3% of registrations in 2022) or Sweden (32.9%), are also in the world leader in all-electric cars.
“More and more electric cars have battery preheating systems, which is smart because it increases range and the car recharges more quickly if it is heated”, underlines Christina Bu, secretary general of the Association. Norwegian company for electric vehicles.
“In fact, when it’s very, very cold, freezing temperatures, sometimes diesel cars can’t start, unlike electric cars,” she notes.
The Norwegians have in any case taken the fold: more than 20% of their cars in circulation now run on clean electricity – another good point – because almost exclusively of hydraulic origin.
Norwegian policy is proactive with heavily taxed thermal engines, unlike electric ones – even if the government is starting to trim these financial advantages in order to make up for a shortfall estimated at nearly 40 billion crowns (5.3 billion $CA). ) last year.
“The recipe for success in Norway is green taxation,” sums up Christina Bu. “We tax what we don’t like, fossil combustion cars, and we encourage what we like, electric cars. It’s as simple as that,” she adds.
And “if Norway can do it, everyone can do it”.