New plug-in passenger car registrations in Norway – March 2016

Nissan breaks the ice as new Nissan LEAF 30 kWh hits showrooms

Norway again astonishes the world with an extremely high market share of new plug-in electric cars sold this month.

A seemingly permanently sustained level of over 20% has now jumped to 33.5% in March!

One in three passenger cars registered in Norway was plug-in hybrid or all-electric

During the month, a record 4,646 passenger plug-ins were registered out of 13,875 total.

All-electric cars still hold the majority of plug-in sales, but the 2,595 sold was actually 23.5% less than year ago. On the other hand, the 2,051 plug-in hybrids moved is new record, up a massive 468%

Of note: those numbers don't include a massive two passenger hydrogen fuel cell cars sold, or the 465 used, but imported passenger all-electric cars, and a further 72 light commercial vans (68 new and 4 used imported).

The new, longer range Nissan LEAF returned back to previous form with 676 new registrations, which was 4.9% of the total market in March. The 1,413 LEAFs sold in the first three months of the year is also the third best result in Norway. In only one month prior has the Nissan LEAF had more registrations (716 in October 2013).

The VW e-Golf continues to lead the overall year-to-date totals with 1,765 sold in 2016, but placed 3rd in March with 540 sales. The VW GTE has its best showing of the year with 526 registrations (950 YTD).

The top spot for March went to the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, just edging out the LEAF with 686 new registrations.

Some 487 Tesla Model S registrations was also one of the best results in recent months, although a year ago it was 1,140, showing Tesla's focus being more on US production and scale up of the Model X early in the year when normally more production time would be allotted to international deliveries. In the first quarter, Tesla sold less than half the Model S sedans in Norway than it did a year ago in 2015 (705 VS. 1,532).

A decent 291 registrations were also logged by the Renault ZOE.