My four year old daughter loves movies and books about princesses. She likes to dress up like a princess. My daughters also like to ask me tough questions about why we don’t have a king and queen in Zimbabwe and princesses like in the books and movies on TV and why other countries have kings and queens. I guess I need to catch up on “Monarchs 101” quick.
We have an electric car, a 2013 Nissan Leaf. My four-year-old loves it and tells everyone everywhere she goes that “we have an electric car and we charge it up”. She sees me write a lot of stories about the electric mobility sector and she always asks me what I write about.
She will say: “What are you writing about today?” and then I tell him something like I’m writing about electric cars and motorcycles in Kenya or very large batteries in England and Australia. She then asks, “So you only write about electric cars? Why don’t you write stories about princesses? Then one day she came and said, “I know, you can write about how a princess and her carriage can be electric.” Very good idea, I thought, but where to find a princess with an electric carriage? Well, it turns out that I only had to look at the country that leads the world in EV adoption in terms of market share for new vehicle sales, Norway!
Norway has been leading the way in new electric vehicle sales for a long time. Last year, market shares were 79.3% for BEVs and 8.5% for PHEVs, which combines with 87.8%. Norway also has a princess! And guess what? She has an electric car! Princess Astrid owns an all-electric car that has the number plate A-9 when in official use. There’s more good news from Norway because Norway’s royal family has recently added two battery-electric cars to its official fleet of vehicles: a Mercedes EQS and a BMW i7. In addition, the palace also got a Mercedes EQV to support its activities.
Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway have been privately driving electric cars for some time. In recent times they have used, among other vehicles, a Tesla. It’s great to see that members of the royal family have been using electric vehicles privately and that there is now an official electric fleet for the Norwegian royal family as well. It’s only a few vehicles for now, but the fleet will grow very soon, as when the leases of other vehicles end, they will replace them with electric vehicles.
This is one of the reasons why I was excited when the two big luxury carmakers launched the Mercedes-Benz EQS, the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV and the BMW i7. Presidents, top government officials, CEOs, and other influential people like to own or be driven in S-Class and 7 Series BMWs. Making them live the electric lifestyle could help them shape national policies and frameworks that will accelerate the transition to electric mobility in their companies, organizations, government institutions and countries in general. Despite Norway being the leader in electric vehicle adoption, a recent article by the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association says that none of the government cars are electric. Well, I hope they follow the example of the royal family and get a lot of electric vehicles to be part of the government fleet. As the transition to EVs accelerates, more companies should look to EVs that meet VVIP fleet safety specifications.
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