If you think about North Sea oil what country comes to mind. Likely you said the UK, but in reality the biggest beneficiary of North Sea oil was Norway. The government put much of the money in a pension fund which is one of the world’s largest funds owning 2% of all stock market holdings. The fund has tight restrictions to ensure it remains that way when the North Sea oil runs out.

If you were to think about electric vehicles sales, which countries would you think of? In an article by Victoria Klesty of Reuters, China is the biggest overall car market but Norway with a population of 5.4 million has the world’s highest proportion of electric vehicles. Thanks to taxes on gasoline power vehicles, more than 2/3’s of new sales in Norway were electric vehicles.

If you think about the climate of Norway (think about the movie Frozen) and then consider if electric vehicles are viable there, they are viable anywhere.

In Norway, electric vehicles do not have the taxes than gasoline power vehicles have. Also there is a tax on gasoline power vehicles coming into the cities. These tax breaks is expected to drive the proportion of overall electric sales as high as 80% in 2022. In 2025 there is suppose to be no or very few sales of gasoline power vehicles. 176,276 electric cars were sold.

Tesla has a 11.6% share followed by VW with 9.6% according to the Norwegian Road Federation.

The most popular brands were the Tesla 3, then the hybrid RAV 4 from Toyota and the VW ID.4.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in every country tax considerations play an important role in decision making. If taxes are greater in one industry, then people will seek alternatives. If the industry which you own shares in is heavily taxed, unless the profits are great, it is time to look for alternatives.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.