Over 140,000 electric cars registered in Norway

OSLO, March 22 (Xinhua) -- A total of 142,490 electric cars were registered in Norway at the beginning of 2018, an increase of over 40 percent from the previous year, the country's statistics bureau said on Thursday.

The vast majority of the electric cars were passenger cars, totalling 139,000, Statistics Norway said in a report.

Electric cars constituted 5.1 percent of the passenger car stock compared to 3.7 percent at the end of 2016, according to the report.

At the beginning of 2018, a total of 144,646 hybrid passenger cars were registered in the country. This was 58.8 percent more than at the end of 2016.

While the number of petrol passenger cars was reduced by 4.7 percent to 1.14 million from 2016 to 2017, the stock of diesel passenger cars increased by 1.4 percent to 1.3 million in the same period.

As of Dec. 31, 2017, a total of 3.3 million cars were registered in Norway, which was 1.9 percent more than in 2016, the report said. Enditem