Norway looking to ban gas-powered car sales by 2025
The exclusive use of electric cars in Norway may be coming sooner than many people think as Norway's policy makers are looking to enforce a rule to stop selling gas-powered cars in the country by 2025, according to a recent report in Electrek. It should be noted that although Norway was the first European country to get Tesla charging stations and now one in four cars sold in the nation is electric, it is also one of the world's top oil exporters, bringing in billions from the production and sale of oil and gas.

An all-electric future may be closer than you think—at least if you live in Norway. The country’s four leading political parties have reportedly agreed to a plan to stop selling gasoline-powered cars by 2025, according to energy blog Electrek, citing a report in the Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (Norwegian, paywall).

Elon Musk was pretty excited about the news.

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The details are in some dispute: The two left-leaning parties confirmed the report, but the two right-leaning parties denied it.

Norway was the first European country to get Tesla charging stations, and in April 2015, the country reached its target of registering 50,000 electric cars by 2018, beating its deadline by two years. About one in four cars sold there is electric.

The country has provided generous subsidies and incentives to people who wanted to buy electric cars, including tax exemptions, toll exemptions, and free parking and charging. The Norwegian parliament had originally planned to extend the incentives to 2018, but it ultimately decided to scale back the incentives, and levied taxes once again on electric-car owners.

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Norway is also one of the world’s top oil exporters, pulling in billions from the production and sale of oil and gas. However, the Norway’s gargantuan sovereign wealth fund has been divesting from fossil-fuel companies over the past few years.