July 2, 2022

Heading north through Sweden and into Norway, we began to notice Tesla cars. We had seen Teslas pretty much everywhere, but not like this. About one hundred kilometers south of Oslo, I was starting to feel sleepy, so Diana suggested I count Teslas.

That was an eye-opener, in more ways than just keeping me awake.

You couldn’t go more than about five seconds without seeing at least one Tesla. In some cases, in a pack of ten cars headed south, there would be three or four Teslas. There were also a lot of electric VWs (Up! and ID3 models especially), Hyundais, Kias, BMWs, Audis, Ford Mustangs, and many more. The sheer volume of electric cars made me wonder about my personal opinions that there was no way the current infrastructure would support a sudden increase in electric vehicles. I still believe that to be true in the US: it will take time to build enough charging stations, and to be able to supply enough electricity to charge that many cars at one time. But Norway is doing it now. Granted, it’s a much smaller country, with only 5.5 million people, but the rapid adoption of EVs is pretty substantial.

Initially we thought the huge volume of Teslas was only near Oslo, the capitol of Norway and its largest city. But since then we’ve traveled deep into the fjord lands, far from any real city, and there are still Teslas and other EVs everywhere, many pulling trailers, or carrying two sea kayaks on the roof.

We stopped in Vollen for two nights, at a small AirBnB. Vollen is a small rural community across the bay from Oslo. Our host, Christian, was the kind of guy you hope to meet while traveling; he didn’t mind taking the time (and in fact offered) to answer our questions, give us some history lessons, and give us some tips on where to go and what to see. His place was so comfortable though that we ended up just hanging out there, getting some laundry done, catching up on paperwork, and enjoying being in one place for a while.

Christian fired up the pizza oven one night and made some incredible pizza with home-made dough. His mother (on the right) stopped by also. I could have talked with her for hours. Great people with backgrounds that beg for more details.

Home-made pizza in a home-built pizza oven. The best!

Christian and his family live on the family farm, which has been in his family for 13 generations. The small house next to his was built in the 1730s, and his home was originally built in the 1850s, though it has been added to and remodeled several times since then. His family grew strawberries and raspberries on the land when it was a farm, and worked other jobs in the off-season, as carpenters and ship builders for example.

I asked Christian about the number of Teslas we were seeing, and he laughed and said “Norway is Elon Musk’s Playground”. Several years ago, when Norway began advocating a switch to electric vehicles, the government passed incentives and subsidies if you purchased an electric car. Also, electricity was provided free of charge to everyone (this has since changed), so it meant no “refueling” charge either. All of this helps to explain why in March alone, electric vehicles accounted for 86% of all new car sales in Norway.

Christian is also a sailor, and has a 42 foot sailboat moored at the marina in Vollen. He invited us to go sailing with him while we were there, but between our laziness, enjoying a couch and a patio for a couple of days, and the weather (it was a bit rainy off and on, with some gusts), we decided to just stay put. The family is headed off this week on the boat, south to Sweden and Denmark.

After relaxing for a couple of days, we set off towards the west coast of Norway, into some incredible beauty.