I have been tracking electric vehicle sales data all year, and the numbers for 2026 tell a story nobody predicted two years ago.
The global headline looks great
Globally, about 27% of all new cars sold in 2026 are electric -- up from 25% in 2025, according to the IEA Global EV Outlook. That is roughly 23 million electric cars hitting roads this year. Norway is basically done with gas cars: 97.6% of new cars there were fully electric in December 2025. China is above 60% and still climbing.
Sounds like everything is going great, right?
Then you look at the US numbers
Here is where the story gets strange. After the $7,500 federal EV tax credit expired on September 30, 2025, US EV sales collapsed. Q1 2026 saw a 28% year-on-year decline -- just 216,399 new EVs sold, and market share dropped to 5.8%.
To put that in perspective: China sold about 5.2 million EVs in the first half of 2026 alone. The US sold roughly 440,000 in the same period. That is a 12-to-1 ratio.
What is actually driving this split
It mostly comes down to three things:
Price. The average EV battery pack now costs $99/kWh globally. But Chinese manufacturers pay around $84/kWh while North American manufacturers pay $123/kWh. That 46% premium shows up in sticker prices. You can buy a decent EV in China for under $15,000. The cheapest new EV in the US is still around $30,000.
Policy. China is tightening emissions rules and subsidizing EV production. Europe has 2035 combustion-engine phaseout targets, and Q1 2026 European EV sales grew 30% year on year. The US? No federal purchase incentives and an administration actively hostile to EV mandates.
Charging. China has 4.7 million public chargers -- about 65% of the world total. The US has around 200,000. When you need to drive 250 miles across Texas, range anxiety is real.
What I think actually matters here
The split is not about whether EVs are good or bad. It is about whether a country is building the conditions for mass adoption or letting the market figure it out alone. The gap between China at 60%+ and the US at under 7% is not about technology -- it is about policy, infrastructure, and price.
For anyone buying a car in 2026, the practical question is simpler: in your region, at your budget, does an EV save you money? In Norway, the answer is clearly yes. In Mississippi, probably not yet.
Data sources: IEA Global EV Outlook 2026, BloombergNEF EVO June 2026, Argonne National Laboratory, Cox Automotive Q1 2026.
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