OSLO -- Ford Motor's electric Mustang Mach-E topped Norway's car sales in May, the first full month of registrations for the crossover in the small but influential Nordic market.
Battery-electric vehicles made up 60.4 percent of all new cars sold in Norway last month, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said on Tuesday, up from 43.1 percent a year ago, as the country seeks to become the first to end the sale of cars with gasoline and diesel engines by 2025.
By exempting fully electric vehicles from taxes imposed on internal combustion engines, Norway has turned its car market into a testing ground for automakers seeking a path to a future without fossil fuels.
A total of 1,384 electric Ford Mustang Mach-E crossovers were registered in May for a 10 percent share of Norway's overall car market, ahead of Toyota's RAV4 hybrid crossover and Skoda's electric Enyaq crossover. The Tesla Model 3 sedan took sixth place.
"Our realistic goal is to remain prominent in the sales statistics for several months to come," Ford's Norway CEO, Per Gunnar Berg, said in a statement.
In 2020, electric cars took a 54 percent share of the overall Norwegian market, outselling the combined volume of gasoline, diesel and all hybrid engines for the first time on a full-year basis.
By contrast, cars with diesel-only engines have tumbled from a peak of 75.7 percent of the Norwegian market in 2011 to just 8.6 percent last year.
The introduction of new models will frequently give a brand a boost as pre-orders are shipped in large numbers, such as the 2019 launch of Tesla's Model 3, the top selling car in Norway that year.
Ford first presented its Mustang Mach-E to the public in late 2019, giving the U.S. automaker well over a year to build a backlog of orders before customers could receive them.
Ford earlier this year said its car lineup in Europe will be all-electric by 2030.
