Elon Musk Praises Norway's Role In Electrification, But Sees Long Catchup For Rest Of World

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk on Sunday praised Norway’s role in leading the world towards electrification but added that the rest of the world has still a long way to replicate those efforts successfully.

What Happened: The world’s richest man said it's still time for the rest of the world to replace the entire fleet of combustion vehicles and follow Norway, a country where electrified models have already occupied 95% of the market.

Musk was responding to a Twitter post which claimed Norway may completely abandon sales of cars with gas-powered engines next year.

As goes Norway, so goes the world. That said, still a long way to go to replace the fleet of combustion vehicles on the road.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 26, 2021

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Why It Matters: The Scandinavian country tops the charts in terms of rate of electric vehicle adoption and is a model for other countries that are looking to a completely phase out cars that rely on fossil fuels.  

In Norway, of the 155,709 first-time registered new passenger cars so far this year, 99,922 are electric, as per Norwegian Information Council for Road Traffic, or OFV. Including hybrids the share would be much higher as less than 5% are gas-powered vehicles in Norway.

Tesla, Volkswagen Group VWAGY and Nissan Motor Co NSANY are among the top five automakers in the country. Volkswagen and Nissan currently sell the ID. series and the Leaf electric vehicles in Norway.

Norway aims for new cars to be emissions-free by 2025.

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U.S. listed Chinese automakers Nio Inc NIO, Xpeng Inc XPEV and others chose Norway as the first destination for their overseas expansion.

Price Action: Tesla shares closed 5.76% higher at $1,067 a share on Friday.