Innovation
Tesla Model S is outselling all other cars in this country
Breaks all-time car sales record.
It's been on sale for less than a year in Norway, but Tesla's Model S all-electric car has already broken the country's car sales records.
In March, Tesla sold 1,493 Model S cars in Norway, the company's number two market for the cars, behind the United States.
It might not sound like a lot of cars, but in a country of about five million people, it's huge news for the Silicon Valley-based car company. Norway hasn't had a single car of any type, gas or electric, sell this well in a single month since 1986 when the Ford Sierra had 1,454 sales. Nearly 30 years later, Tesla has broken the record. To put Tesla's record sales figures into perspective, the top selling car in Norway in February, the Nissan Leaf, had just 484 sales, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But it's no accident that Tesla is selling well in Norway. Tesla targeted the country in its European sales push. Last year, Tesla installed enough Supercharger stations, which allow Tesla owners to quickly charge their cars for free, so that 90 percent of the country's population now has one within 200 miles.
With the Norwegian government providing generous incentives for consumers to purchase EVs, Norway has become one of the top electric car markets in the world. About one in 100 cars in the country are electric. That might not seem significant, but in the United States about 0.7 percent of cars are electric, according to NPR.
But while Tesla is quickly gaining in popularity, Nissan is still Norway's leading electric car company with a market share of 41 percent. For now.
Thumbnail photo: Tesla Motors
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com