Electric-vehicle maker Tesla has sold more cars in Norway in 2025 than any other automaker ever did in a full year, registration data showed on Monday, beating the country’s annual sales record with one month to spare in a rare bright spot for CEO Elon Musk. Led by the mass-market crossover Model Y, Tesla’s sales in Norway rose 34.6 per cent year-to-date, overcoming a consumer backlash against the brand in much of Europe over Musk’s support for far-right parties and his backing of US President Donald Trump.
Tesla registered 6,215 new cars in Norway in November, bringing its January-November tally to 28,606 and surpassing a full-year record of 26,575 set by Volkswagen in 2016, according to the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV).
Norway’s overall car sales rose by 70 per cent year-on-year in November as buyers rushed to dealerships ahead of a planned hike in EV taxes from January, with Tesla seeing an almost threefold increase compared to the same month of 2024.
“There is a bit of a car bonanza in Norway at the moment,” OFV’s CEO Geir Inge Stokke told Reuters.
Fully electric vehicles accounted for 97.6 per cent of all new cars sold in the Nordic nation last month, registrations show, in line with a long-held aspiration in Norway of ending the sale of petrol and diesel combustion engines in 2025. By contrast, the Texas-based automaker’s global deliveries are expected to decline 7 per cent this year, according to Visible Alpha, a research consultancy, with European sales down about 30 per cent through October and declining again in November, the continent’s most recent registration data shows.
Tesla’s standing in Norway, built amid heavy subsidies for EVs, made the country a small but important part of the company’s emergence as a leading carmaker, becoming its first market outside of North America more than a decade ago. Sales of the Model Y dropped at the start of the year in Norway, but quickly rebounded from the second quarter with the launch of a long-awaited upgrade.>
