Norway has quickly become the world’s EV trendsetter. In April, the LEAF was the second-best selling model in the country, and had sold over 4,500 units. In September, Tesla’s Model S became the top-selling car. In fact, EVs have long been popular in the Scandinavian country – the current total of 15,000 EVs also includes several older species that have gone extinct elsewhere, such as the Th!nk City.

However, this success is now starting to cause some problems. According to the local newspaper Budstikka, EVs are beginning to clog the bus lanes on the highways between Oslo and its suburbs – during a recent rush hour, 75% of the vehicles using the bus lane on one busy route were EVs, and only 7.5% were buses.

Charging facilities are also proving inadequate. Norway has around 5,000 public charging stations. Companies are struggling to keep up with the demand for workplace charging. A recent article in Quartz tells the story of a University of Oslo employee who finds she has to get to work extra early to score a charging space for her Citroën C-Zero.

The challenges of EV ownership have become part of the Nordic lexicon. Second place on the Norwegian Language Council’s list of words of the year was rekkeviddeangst – range anxiety.

Source: Quartz
Images: Elbilforeningen/Flickr