In week 1 for our class blog, I discussed the topic of sustainability, and how some fashion companies are implementing a more eco-friendly type of leather. This week, I was researching other ways the earth can be a more sustainable place, and I stumbled upon an article about how Norway is number 1 in the world for electric vehicles. After reading the headline I had a lot of questions such as how did they do it, and why don't other countries do the same thing?
Norway was able to do this by implementing several clever policies. Norway's government encouraged people to buy electric vehicles by giving owners a break from registration taxes, road tolls, value-added taxes, Co2 taxes, NOx taxes, and weight taxes. By 2001 electric vehicles were cheaper to own than gasoline-powered vehicles.
However there still weren't a lot of electric vehicles in Norway in 2001, this was because of lack of production and lack of charging stations. Publicly financed companies helped fix the changing station issue, and by 2012 electric vehicles were 3% of the country's new car market, compared to the United States which is slightly below 2 percent in 2021. In Norway, electric cars now make up 10% of all cars on the road, and Norway plans on all new cars being electric in 2025. After more research, I also learned that some states in the US are also implementing some policies to encourage electric vehicles, such as New Jersey, California, Oregon, and Maryland.
Overall, I think these policies are very smart and forward-thinking, and I'd love to see other countries take influence as the world needs to become a more sustainable place.
Electric Car Picture
I too believe in the electrically supplied future but the current problems for electric cars are the batteries. Obviously range is a limitation but the design and shape for batteries as well as their chargers differ. Most companies don't have a standard for their electric cars and I think that's a problem, because only certain charger work for certain cars (like phone chargers and phones). I think this could be solved if there was a universal charger or a method of taking out the car battery and replacing it with a charged one (universal.)
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