2017 remains a record year for Norwegian true fleet registrations but 2018 is not far behind, new research reveals.

For the first nine months of 2018, the Nissan Leaf was number one in fleet

The analysis by Michael Gergen at Dataforce finds that for the first nine months of this year, true fleet registrations were done just 0.08% – or less than 400 units – while the volume for Short-term rentals was extraordinary stable, down only nine units when compared to the first nine months of the previous year. Private registrations fell 8.3% and the overall market was just only 4.2% year to date on last year’s record total.

Beside Sweden, Norway is the only country where the top 10 ranking for true fleets is led by Volvo; the carmaker was up 17.1% for the first nine months of the year, followed by BMW with just 18 registrations less, then BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen and Mercedes. However, the biggest volume increase within even the top 20 brands was achieved by Nissan (sixth, +34.7%), mainly driven by the Leaf. Ford and Škoda, ranked seventh and eighth, both lost one position while Mitsubishi had a very positive year so far (+13.3% thanks to the Outlander and the all new Eclipse Cross) and took the last spot in the top 10 behind Peugeot.

Dataforce also highlighted that Norway’s true fleet segment has the highest share of SUV Medium sector across the whole of Europe, with almost 15% of all company cars belonging to this group. Top models on the podium cover the Mitsubishi Outlander, Volvo XC60 and Toyota RAV4.

And Norway is also known for its exceptional fuel type mix. For January until September the share taken by alternative fuels accounted to 51.3%; sevenfold the value for the EU-5 region. In fact the share for hybrids alone (36.0%) is now higher than the ones for petrol (27.0%) and diesel (21.6%) while pure EVs take up 15.4%.

This reflects in the model ranking. For the first nine months of 2018, the Nissan Leaf was number one in fleets, followed by the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and the Volkswagen Golf (of which 70% are a GTE or E-Golf) with the BMW i3 ranked fourth. And the models in ranks number five to 10 (Volvo V90 and XC60, Toyota Yaris, Volkswagen Passat, Toyota RAV4 and Mercedes GLC) all have a hybrid share of at least 70%, three of them even above 90%.