Here’s a taste of the future of electric vehicles, because in Norway the future is now

The New York Times took it a close look to the electric future.

It’s called Norway.

Jack Ewing is a veteran Times reporter who has spent years examining the auto industry from insider perspectives that have included Germany and the United States. In a detailed report published yesterday in The Times, Ewing toured Norway, where 80% of new car sales were recorded last year electric car – to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of driving the EV charge.

By shifting its focus from combustion-powered to battery-powered mobility, Norway, writes Ewing, has become “an observatory for understanding what the electric vehicle revolution could mean for the environment, workers and life in general.”

In interviews with car dealers and executives in that Scandinavian country, along with electricity providers, lawmakers, residents of the capital Oslo, and workers who’ve learned to deal with frustrated customers at charging stations, Ewing pretty much covers Norway’s experience from all angles.

Among the most convincing and tangible results of the report is air. In Oslo, greenhouse gases emissions they have decreased by 30% in the last four years. The city is even more peaceful. And activist groups have debunked the theory that climate change it involves “sad” sacrifices. As one rep said, “With electric vehicles, that’s not the case. It’s actually something people embrace.

History suggests parallels to the United States, certainly. Ewing found that city residents who want to go electric are challenged to find enough battery charger. He quotes Sirin Hellvin Stav, Oslo’s deputy mayor for the environment and transport, who says that the city “wants to install more public charging stations, but also to reduce the number of cars by a third to make the streets safer and free from space for walking and cycling. “The goal is to reduce emissions, which is why electric vehicles are so important, but also to make the city better to live in,” she says.

The Times piece also tackles other related topics: the tidying up of car dealerships to meet EV sales, growing demands on Norway’s power grid (no, it didn’t collapse), battery recyclingand the expectation that the country will end sales of internal combustion engine cars by 2025. The piece is a helpful preview of what may soon be encountered, both good and bad, here in the United States.

Read the full NYT report here.