In Norway, the Electric Vehicle Future Has Already Arrived

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/08/business/energy-environment/norway-electric-vehicles.html

By Jack Ewing, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: Last year, 80 percent of new-car sales in Norway were electric, putting the country at the vanguard of the shift to battery-powered mobility. ...The country will end the sales of internal combustion engine cars in 2025. ...There are problems, of course, including unreliable chargers and long waits during periods of high demand. ...But the air in Oslo, Norway’s capital, is measurably cleaner. The city is also quieter as noisier gasoline and diesel vehicles are scrapped. Oslo’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 30 percent since 2009, yet there has not been mass unemployment among gas station workers and the electrical grid has not collapsed. ...Levels of nitrogen oxides, byproducts of burning gasoline and diesel that cause smog, asthma and other ailments, have fallen sharply as electric vehicle ownership has risen. ...Oslo’s air has unhealthy levels of microscopic particles generated partly by the abrasion of tires and asphalt. Electric vehicles, which account for about one-third of the registered vehicles in the city but a higher proportion of traffic, may even aggravate that problem. ...Oslo is also targeting construction, the source of more than a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions. ...At a park in a working-class Oslo neighborhood last month, an excavator scooped out earth for a decorative pond. A thick cable connected the excavator to a power source, driving its electric motor. Later, an electric dump truck hauled away the soil.... 

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