Gas-only cars fell below half of global new car sales in early 2026

The drop was sharpest where electrified cars were already common. Gas-only sales fell by about a quarter in China and by 13% in Europe. EV sales in Europe rose by roughly a third, and Southeast Asia's nearly doubled. China was the odd one out. EV sales there dipped slightly after subsidies were cut back in January, though the country still buys about half of all EVs sold worldwide.

The trigger was money at the pump. Nikkei links the shift to the oil price spike that followed conflict in the Middle East, which made the low running costs of an EV hard to ignore. Germany shows it most clearly. In mid-September the motoring club ADAC said E10 petrol had hit a record national average of €2.273 a litre (around US$2.65). In August, 32.4% of new cars registered in Germany were fully electric, according to the federal motor transport authority KBA.

Mobility Global analyst Yoshiaki Kawano thinks the change will last. In remarks reported by the Seoul Economic Daily, he said there are "not many cases of EV buyers returning to gasoline cars or hybrids". That's the bet at the heart of this story: people who try electric because fuel got expensive tend to stay electric.

So why do most new cars still burn fuel?

The headline number only counts cars that run on gasoline alone. A conventional hybrid pairs a gas engine with a small battery and an electric motor, and the battery recharges from braking and from the engine itself. You never plug it in, and every mile it drives still starts as gasoline. Add hybrids, plug-in hybrids and diesels back in, and about 83% of the new vehicles sold worldwide in the first half still had a combustion engine.

Fully electric cars are still fewer than one in five new sales worldwide. That's a real shift, but most of the world hasn't gone electric yet.

Does any of this reach drivers in the US?

Only partly. American drivers are feeling the same oil shock: AAA says regular gas averaged $4.33 a gallon in September, a record for the month. Even after crude eased in early October, pump prices were still the highest ever for that time of year.

US buyers have mostly answered with hybrids, not EVs. EVs made up 5.8% of new vehicle sales in the second quarter, according to Cox Automotive's Kelley Blue Book counts, roughly half their 10.6% peak in the third quarter of 2025, when buyers rushed to beat the end of the federal EV tax credit. Dealers, meanwhile, are selling Toyota (TM) RAV4 and Sienna hybrids within about two weeks of getting them. Cox senior economist Charlie Chesbrough says shoppers keep "migrating toward hybrid vehicles".

Don't expect the global shift to lower your gas bill any time soon. Expensive fuel is what pushed buyers toward electrified cars, not the result of it. And the cars on the road get replaced slowly, so a change in what people buy this year won't make a dent in fuel demand, or in prices, for years. For used-car shoppers, the bigger change is supply. More than 300,000 EVs are due to come off lease in the US over the next year, which should put many more secondhand EVs on dealer lots.

So the gas-only car has lost its majority for the first time, and that's a real milestone. Most of the market it lost went to hybrids that still burn fuel, though, and the main push came from an oil shock that could fade. Watch the second-half numbers to see whether the shift holds as crude cools. And watch the US, where buyers are clearly picking hybrids over EVs.