Cars that sold best in April

April's numbers provide light at the end of the tunnel, but Norway's largest shipping company is working to put a stop to shipping. These cars sold better.

After a poor start to the year, 11,241 cars were registered for the first time in April. Figures from the Road Traffic Information Board (OFV) showed that the number of new passenger cars was 25 per cent higher than in the same month last year.

However, the first four months of the year, with a total of 33,493 new vehicles, are 11 percent behind last year.

Far from the peak years

– At the pace of new car sales, we aim to sell between 110,000 and 115,000 new passenger cars this year. That's down from last year's 126,953 cars and far from the peak years, says director Øyvind Solberg Thorsen of the Road Traffic Information Board (OFV) in a press release.

Registration statistics show that Norwegians are buying new, smaller, more affordable cars, and that most people still want SUVs with all-wheel drive.

– It may be too early to declare that the market is healthy, but the situation looks brighter than it did a few months ago. Our member companies indicate higher activity and more optimism among retailers, although we continue to see signs of moderation.

This is what Andreas Bibo Handeland, head of communications at the National Association of Belém Porters, says.

Worth noting:

• Volkswagen with two cars in the top three list.
• The share of electric cars stabilized at approx. 90 percent.
• The average CO2 emissions of all new passenger cars registered in April were 12.8 g/km.
• With 44,519 ownership changes, the used car market was up 17.9 percent compared to April 2023.

It applies the fast charger brake

The decline in new car sales means fewer electric cars on the roads today than Norway's largest charging company had envisioned just a year ago. So Recharge chose to reduce the development speed.

Today, there are approximately 90 electric cars each with a fast charger, while Recharge's calculations show that in the long term there would need to be 125 cars each with fast chargers to ensure profitability.

This is in line with the government's charging strategy, which states that there should be between 10,000 and 14,000 fast and fast chargers in Norway in 2030. With 8,000 already in place today, it means we are heading towards an over-build of charging stations.

This is explained by Stian Matthiessen, Head of Mass Communications, Framing Conditions and Sustainability at Recharge.

-We depend on making money, and we don't do that when we build charging stations that are expensive and underused.