Norway continues to lead the way in electric vehicle (EV) sales, at least as a percentage of all new car sales, according to industry analysts IHS Automotive. One in three new cars sold in the oil-rich Nordic nation was an EV in the first quarter of the year, and Volkswagen's e-Golf was the best seller.

Although EVs made up fewer than one percent of all new cars registered in the US over the same time frame, that accounted for almost 15,000 of them, making it the largest market in terms of overall numbers. China was runner-up, with 12,550. IHS' data shows the wisdom of Tesla's EV strategy, too. In the US, Model S sales in Q1 outstripped every other EV. While the report doesn't give us an actual number of Tesla Model S vehicles sold in the US, Autoblog reports that it must have been at least 4,086, since Nissan sold 4,085 Leafs (Leaves?) over the same period.

IHS attributes strong sales in Norway, the Netherlands, China, and the US to powerful incentives, something we've explored recently at Ars. Within the US, EV sales are heavily skewed toward states like California and Georgia that offer large local incentives on top of federal EV tax credits. The analysts also point to a lack of good incentives for Germany's poor showing on the league table, although they note that France did equally poor even though that country does incentivize EV purchases.