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How Tesla Cooked and Then Lost Norway
It is important to understand that data shows Tesla is NOT doing well in Norway, despite all the carefully curated propaganda that Tesla pumps out to hide the truth. Their share is down four straight years, seventh in August, Q3 down 55%. Here’s an example of a March 2026 cooked up chart, with no other way to put it: pure disinformation.
Source: Twitter
Liar, liar, another Tesla in Norway is on fire.
1 January 2016, Brokelandsheia: a Tesla caught fire on its own while charging and was written off, perhaps to buy another one and juice the sales numbers through rapid loss. Source: VG
That chart shows about 3,100 cars, which is the first week of March, and labels it the entire month. That’s just false. OFV’s full March count is 17,685 cars with Tesla at 6,150, or 34.8%, so the _other brands outsold Tesla nearly two to one_. The chart also freezes the crest of Tesla’s quarter-end delivery wave, juiced by a NOK 50,000 bonus Tesla paid out of its own pocket to cover Norway’s new VAT, plus 0% financing, both of which expired 31 March, after a January in which Tesla registered 83 cars.
Eighty-three cars registered in the whole month. Ouch. Then a month of Tesla-paid discounts to move the quarter-end boatload, and a fan account photographed the first week it landed and called it March. Tesla then raised Model Y prices by NOK 10,000 and cut the bonus to 30,000, and the quarter that followed plummeted to 25% below the year before. The quarter after that is 55% down so far, meaning Norwegians aren’t buying it unless Tesla buys it for them.
Let me put it another way, Tesla gets a “lead” story by dumping cars on a strategic schedule to buy a headline. When it doesn’t pour money into Norway to offset the purchase price of its own cars, sales fall by half or more: 24 cars in July, seventh place in August.
It also is important to understand that Tesla is the carmaker whose software is so defective a federal jury found it liable, $243 million in the Benavides Autopilot case in August 2025, and whose own crash reports to the federal regulator rise every year.
The driver-assistance software it sells as “Full Self-Driving” produced 826 reported crashes in the first half of 2026, dramatically up from 476 a year earlier and 180 in 2022, with July 2026 the worst single month on record, after records in May and then again in June. Tesla promised a lower crash rate and withholds the data that would show it; the only number it is forced to publish by law is the count, and _the crash count has quadrupled_.
Tesla’s own reports to NHTSA under the Standing General Order. January through June crashes, 2022 to 2026: 180, 261, 269, 476, 826. A 4.6x rise over five years. The increase from 2025 to 2026 alone (350) is nearly double the 2022 total for the same six months. Monthly records fell three times running: 207 in May, 209 in June, 236 in July, with four fatal crashes in July. Source: Electrek
Here are four pillars of the Tesla in Norway story.
**First** , Tesla’s share of Norway’s EV market has fallen every year for four years, and the 2025 record hid it. Tesla share of all EV registrations by year:
* 23.1% in 2023
* 20.6% in 2024
* 19.6% in 2025
* 16.9% in 2026 to date
The 2025 volume record came from the EV market growing 59% (110,110 in 2023 to 174,989 in 2025) under the VAT deadline, with Tesla growing 35% in the same period. A “record year” in a market that grew faster than you is a loss of share, and that is what happened.
**Second** , Tesla’s volume in Norway tracks Tesla’s own money, not demand. The big quarters each have a purchase behind them:
* Q1 2023 was the Model Y launch backlog
* Q2 and Q3 2025 were the refresh plus the cheaper trim
* Q4 2025 was the tax deadline
* Q1 2026 was the NOK 50,000 rebate
When the rebate dropped to 30,000 and prices rose 10,000 in Q2 2026, volume fell 25% year on year; in Q3, with no new offer, it is down 55%. Set aside the quarters with a launch, a deadline or a rebate and the residual runs 10% to 17% in 2023, 2025 and 2026: Q3 and Q4 2023, Q1 2025, Q2 and Q3 2026. That residual 10% to 17% is Tesla’s unsubsidised share in the world’s most mature EV market, and it has a plain explanation: one EV in five on Norwegian roads unfortunately has been a Tesla, and some of those owners will trade in for the same thing.
**Third** , the wave is the marketing. Tesla ships to the quarter because its reported delivery number is the product it sells to investors. Norway is one of the few registries where you can watch the wave land, and each crest generates a completely unrealistic propaganda chart. The press docket for a quarterly headline also produces the disinformation about it. I see people spreading nonsense about the delivery wave to feed their hype cycles, unmoored from the real numbers.
**Fourth** , the base is now against Tesla. Q3 2026 will finish somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000, down 30% to 42%. Q4 2026 is measured against 12,546 with no deadline to repeat, so a normal Q4 of 6,000 to 8,000 reads as down 36% to 52%. On that path 2026 lands near 25,000 to 28,000, which means Tesla has dropped all the way back to 2023 and 2024. The trend line through four years is flat volume and falling share in a market that grew by more than half.
Bottom line, Tesla has tried to cook the numbers from the start: a range display Reuters found was rigged on instruction, range claims South Korea fined as false, and “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” names a California administrative judge found misleading. No other brand sold in Norway carries that record, or a federal jury verdict on its driver-assistance software, or a crash count that quadruples in five years. Those brands are the ones taking Tesla’s share, a simple explanation of who has been punching Elon Musk in the face.
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