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   OSLO, Norway — With motor vehicles generating nearly a 10th of global CO2   
   emissions, governments and environmentalists around the world are   
   scrambling to mitigate the damage. In wealthy countries, strategies often   
   revolve around electrifying cars — and for good reason, many are looking   
   to Norway for inspiration.   
      
   Over the last decade, Norway has emerged as the world’s undisputed leader   
   in electric vehicle adoption. With generous government incentives   
   available, 87 percent of the country’s new car sales are now fully   
   electric, a share that dwarfs that of the European Union (13 percent) and   
   the United States (7 percent). Norway’s muscular EV push has garnered   
   headlines in outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian while   
   drawing praise from the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Economic   
   Forum, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “I’d like to thank the people of Norway   
   again for their incredible support of electric vehicles,” he tweeted last   
   December. “Norway rocks!!”   
      
   I’ve been writing about transportation for the better part of a decade, so   
   all that fawning international attention piqued my curiosity. Does Norway   
   offer a climate strategy that other countries could copy chapter and   
   verse? Or has the hype outpaced the reality?   
      
   So I flew across the Atlantic to see what the fuss was about. I discovered   
   a Norwegian EV bonanza that has indeed reduced emissions — but at the   
   expense of compromising vital societal goals. Eye-popping EV subsidies   
   have flowed largely to the affluent, contributing to the gap between rich   
   and poor in a country proud of its egalitarian social policies.   
   Worse, the EV boom has hobbled Norwegian cities’ efforts to untether   
   themselves from the automobile and enable residents to instead travel by   
   transit or bicycle, decisions that do more to reduce emissions, enhance   
   road safety, and enliven urban life than swapping a gas-powered car for an   
   electric one.   
      
   Despite the hosannas from abroad, Norway’s government has begun to unwind   
   some of its electrification subsidies in order to mitigate the downsides   
   of no-holds-barred EV promotion.   
      
   “Countries should introduce EV subsidies in a way that doesn’t widen   
   inequality or stimulate car use at the expense of other transport modes,”   
   Bjørne Grimsrud, director of the transportation research center TØI, told   
   me over coffee in Oslo. “But that’s what ended up happening here in   
   Norway.”   
      
   And it could happen in other countries, too, including in the United   
   States, where transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse   
   gas emissions. The federal government now offers tantalizing rebates to   
   Americans in the market for an electric car, but nothing at all for more   
   climate-friendly vehicles like e-bikes or golf carts (nor a financial   
   lifeline for beleaguered public subway and bus systems).   
      
   Ending the sales of gas-powered cars, as Norway is close to doing, is an   
   essential step toward addressing climate change. But a 2020 study found   
   that even the most optimistic forecasts for global EV adoption would not   
   prevent a potentially catastrophic 2 degree Celsius rise in global   
   temperatures. Reducing driving — not just gas-powered driving — is   
   crucial.   
      
   As the world’s EV trendsetter, Norway’s experience offers a bevy of   
   lessons for other nations seeking to decarbonize transportation. But some   
   of those lessons are cautionary.   
      
   How Norway fell in love with the electric car   
   At first glance, Norway’s EV embrace might seem odd. The country lacks a   
   domestic auto industry and its dominant export is, of all things, fossil   
   fuels. Nevertheless, Norway’s unique geography and identity helped put it   
   at the vanguard of car electrification.   
      
   Historically, Norway has been mostly rural; as recently as 1960, half the   
   nation’s population resided in the countryside. But as the postwar economy   
   boomed, Norwegians migrated to cities, and especially to their fast-   
   growing, sprawling suburbs (much as Americans did at the time). They also   
   fell hard for the automobile.   
      
   “The car was this genius idea for Norwegians,” Ulrik Eriksen, author of   
   the book A Country on Four Wheels, told me over dinner in Oslo, after   
   stashing his cargo e-bike. “Because there is plenty of land, cars opened   
   up urban space for people to live in, letting more of them get sizable   
   single-family homes.”   
      
   Norway embarked on a road-building binge, constructing bridges over fjords   
   and boring tunnels through mountains to connect downtowns with new   
   neighborhoods on the urban fringe. As Norwegian cities expanded, public   
   transit took a back seat. Bergen, for instance, shuttered its extensive   
   tramway service in the 1960s, dumping some of the trams into the North   
   Sea.   
      
   Those decisions cast a long shadow: Norway still has one of Europe’s   
   lowest rates of public transportation usage and a higher car ownership   
   rate than Denmark and Sweden, its Scandinavian neighbors. “Most Norwegian   
   cities now have more of a car-centric, American approach toward   
   transportation than a multi-modal, European one,” Eriksen said.   
      
   Norway’s city residents often own an automobile even though they seldom   
   use it, Oslo-based urban planner Anine Hartmann told me. “Norwegians   
   identify as coming from the place where their parents or grandparents come   
   from,” she said. “Many people have a car to return to that place or simply   
   to visit a cabin in the country.”   
      
   By the 1990s, the automobile was Norway’s indispensable vehicle. It was   
   then that Norwegian entrepreneurs launched two early electric car   
   startups, Buddy and Think. Though their models were clunky and inefficient   
   by today’s standards, the companies spurred excitement that Norway could   
   become a global hub of EV production. Seeking to give the carmakers a   
   tailwind, the Norwegian government exempted EVs from the country’s steep   
   taxes on car purchases, which today add an average of $27,000 to each   
   sale. Even better, EV owners — who at the time were few and far between —   
   would not pay for tolls, parking, or ferries (over all those fjords)   
   anywhere in the country.   
      
   Norway’s dreams of becoming a global hub of EV manufacturing quickly   
   fizzled when the companies ran into financial problems. (This summer, I   
   spotted a tiny, aged Buddy squeezed into an Oslo parking spot, dwarfed by   
   SUVs on either side.) But the incentives remained on the books; since few   
   people were buying EVs, their cost was negligible.   
      
   That changed as the global EV market improved in the mid-2010s, with   
   carmakers like Tesla offering stylish, high-performance models that   
   attracted more buyers. Norway’s EV policies were now championed as a   
   centerpiece of the national effort to slow climate change in an economy   
      
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