“We didn’t really care about cars,” she said. “Now it’s fun.” And going back to a conventional automobile was out of the question, Ms. Nordgarden said: “Driving a petrol car is like time travel back to the 1980s.”

Making Norway’s project to shift away from fossil-fuel cars all the more notable is the fact that the country is one of the world’s biggest producers of oil and natural gas. But it is also blessed with an abundance of fast rivers, allowing it to generate virtually all of its electricity from hydropower. That makes Norway’s electricity cleaner and relatively cheap — a further impetus for adopting e-cars. (A country where much of the electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants would not see as many environmental benefits from switching to electric vehicles.)

Proponents argue that electric cars are essential for a transition to a low-carbon economy, as they are vastly more efficient than conventional autos, transferring about 60 percent of their energy to the wheels. That compares with only about 20 percent for gasoline motors, which waste most of their energy in the form of heat.

To meet climate goals, “a large share of the new cars have to be electric,” Lars Andreas Lunde, the deputy minister of climate and environment and a Conservative Party politician, said in an interview. Because e-cars are more expensive to make than ordinary cars, “there have to be incentives,’’ Mr. Lunde said. “It has to be more expensive to pollute than to use environmentally friendly fuels.”