One in four new cars sold worldwide in 2025 was electric: what the IEA's Global EV Outlook 2026 documents

Electric car sales passed a clean milestone in 2025: one in four new cars sold worldwide was electric. That is the headline finding the International Energy Agency documents in the Global EV Outlook 2026, its annual accounting of electric mobility. The report counts battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars together in its electric car figures, and it bases its analysis on data sources including EV Volumes, ACEA, EAFO, Vahan and template submissions, in the IEA's own wording.

The scale of the market matters for how the figure should be read. The 20 million-plus sales recorded in 2025 grew by 20% from 2024, and the agency notes this was the fifth consecutive year in which annual electric car sales increased by about 3.5 million. As a result, the IEA puts the electrified share of the global car stock at about 5%, displacing what it estimates as 1.2 million barrels of oil per day in 2025. The figure for 2026 sales on the same page is an estimate based on market trends through the first quarter of 2026, not a full-year result.

China sets the pace, Europe rebounds

China remained the world's largest electric car market by a wide margin. The IEA counts more than 13 million electric cars sold there in 2025, accounting for six out of ten electric cars sold globally, with the sales share lifted to almost 55% - monthly sales exceeded a 50% share in 11 out of 12 months of 2025, up from only 5 months in 2024. The agency estimates 44 million electric cars were on Chinese roads at the end of 2025, around 13% of the total car stock.

In Europe, the strongest growth among the three major markets came from Germany, where electric car sales increased by 50% in 2025 to a record 850,000, putting the electric share at around 30% of cars sold there - just below the 31% reached in 2022. The report attributes the German rebound partly to preferential tax treatment for electric company cars and to wider availability of more affordable models, with the average battery electric vehicle price falling around 6% in 2025. In France, battery electric car sales increased by almost 15%.

The markets beyond the big three

Outside China, Europe and the United States, electric car sales reached 2 million in 2025, up from 1.3 million the year before - nearly 50% growth that the agency attributes mainly to emerging markets and developing economies. More than half of those 2 million sales took place in Latin American, Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern countries where the electric sales share has surpassed 10%.

The named examples show how quickly later-entry markets can move: in Viet Nam, policy support through BEV registration fee exemptions since 2022 and VinFast's small affordable models, the VF3 and VF5, promoted the country to Southeast Asia's largest electric car market, with nearly 40% of new car sales electric. In Indonesia, electric car sales more than doubled to reach 15% of new car sales, supported by VAT and import duty exemptions for battery electric cars.

What drivers actually chose, and the used market

Choice is widening. Some 2,500 car models were available worldwide in 2025, and nearly 1,000 of them were electric - about 40% of the total, up from about 35% in 2024. Among China, Europe, the United States and Japan, China is the only market with more electric than conventional models. The market also remains concentrated: in global battery electric sales, just 1% of available BEV models captured one-fifth of the entire global market, led by the Tesla Model Y at nearly 8% of total battery electric car sales, followed by the Tesla Model 3 (3.6%), the Geely Geome Xingyuan (3.5%), the Wuling HongGuang Mini (3.1%) and the BYD Seagull (3.0%).

The second-hand market is growing alongside the new one. Across China, five key European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) and the United States, used electric car sales surpassed 3 million in 2025, an increase of around 35% compared with 2024, according to the IEA's figures. In China, used electric car sales exceeded 1.5 million, around 8% of all used car sales. The United States remains the smallest used electric car market among the regions the agency analyzed, with less than 400,000 transactions in 2025, roughly 2.5% of all used car sales; 2025 was the final year of eligibility for federal tax rebates on second-hand electric vehicles there, which the report ties to a 30% increase in activity.

How to check these numbers yourself

This article holds no measurements, tests or verdicts of our own; every figure above comes from the IEA's Global EV Outlook 2026, chapter 'Trends in electric cars', as read on 18 October 2026, and the agency notes that its 2026 sales numbers are estimates from first-quarter trends. To verify a specific claim, open the chapter on the IEA website and match the number against the passage cited here, then check the chart's notes and sources: each IEA figure is tagged to the data providers behind it, so a China, Germany or Viet Nam figure can be traced to the national source the agency lists. Where a figure matters to a buying or policy decision, prefer the named national registry over any secondary summary, and remember that the report's own estimates can be revised in later editions.