(Oslo) German Volkswagen, the second largest manufacturer in Norway, will stop selling new gasoline and diesel cars in the Scandinavian country from 2024, the brand’s importer announced on Friday.
“As a farewell to fossil fuel cars, the last Golf will be ordered towards the end of the year,” Ulf Tore Hekneby, director of the Norwegian Møller Group, said in a statement.
“This will in many ways mark the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new, bigger era where we are more part of the solution, not the problem,” he added.
Although a major producer of hydrocarbons, Norway has set itself the ambitious goal of selling only zero-emission cars, that is to say essentially electric, from 2025 – ten years before the EU.
Electric cars already represent more than 80% of new registrations there today (83.4% over the first nine months of the year), according to the Road Traffic Information Council (OFV).
Second manufacturer in Norway with a market share of 12.32% since January behind the American Tesla (21.4%), itself an all-electric specialist, Volkswagen will now focus on models in its ID electric range.
In September, the ID.4 SUV was the second best-selling model in the country behind the Tesla Model Y.
The Swedish Volvo, a subsidiary of the Chinese group Geely, also stopped marketing its diesel models in Norway on June 1.