Trends in electric cars {focus on Asia and LATAM - 2026}

IEA ^ | August 2026

[Cronos]

The electric car market grew by 20% from 2024 to exceed 20 million sales. The sales share of electric cars in the overall car market increased to 25%. about 5% of the global car stock is now electrified, displacing 1.2 million barrels of oil per day in 2025.

In a growing number of countries, the electric car sales share has recently surpassed 10%.

Close to 55% of new cars sold in China were electric in 2025

More than 13 million electric cars were sold in China in 2025. Monthly electric car sales exceeded a 50% sales share in 11 out of 12 months of 2025. This lifted the electric car sales share to almost 55%. As a result, an estimated 44 million electric cars were on Chinese roads at the end of 2025, representing around 13% of the total car stock, up from 1 in 10 in 2024.

Sales in Viet Nam more than doubled in 2025, promoting the country to Southeast Asia’s largest electric car market, with nearly 40% of new car sales being electric

In 2025, electric car sales in Thailand increased by 70% from 2024 levels, reaching roughly 140 000, nearly one-quarter of total new car sales.

In Indonesia, electric car sales more than doubled in 2025, reaching 15% of new car sales.

India sales started to pick up in 2025, increasing 75% year-on-year to reach 165 000, representing nearly 4% of total car sales.

Electric car sales in Brazil surged to 180 000, or 9% of all new car sales, up from 6.5% in 2024.

Electric car sales in Mexico tripled in 2025, with sales of plug-in hybrid electric cars increasing sevenfold. As a result, the share of electric car sales in total car sales topped 7% in 2025, up from around 2% in 2024.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: electric; ev; hybrid

[Cronos]

The wars in Ukraine and Iran are pushing more people towards Electric and Hybrid vehicles. This looks to be a systemic change now with higher mileage even in conventional ICE. The net result looks like this would be long-term damage to the Middle-Eastern oil producer's budget.

the price of oil will reduce - enabling more oil to be used for other products (plastics etc)

[fruser1]

displacing 1.2 million barrels of oil per day in 2025

Is this net or only the impact of that much less gas in cars?

Electricity has to be produced. How much additional oil was needed in power plants to handle the increased electrification?

Organic fuels still make up the bulk of the source for electricity production I believe. Even with increasing "green" sourcing, that doesn't even compare to what's produced from nuclear.

[Tell It Right]

IMHO it might make more sense to for a population to depend more on EV’s than gas cars in countries like China and India that aren’t afraid to make new power plants, even coal fired ones.

Here it’d be detrimental to encourage much of the population to switch to EV’s even if it’s mostly for local driving (charging at home, the practical and feasible use of EV’s).

[joshua c]

Evs force more people onto public transportation

How does an apartment dweller charge an ev?

Range is not a problem

Cuz you wont be allowed to leave your 15 minute city

[where's_the_Outrage?]

I just spent over a month in a Thailand village and there are a lot of electric scooters. This actually makes sense as they probably travel less than 15 miles a day. Did not notice electric cars/trucks.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

And electricity comes from.....

A quick, assisted search -- "Electricity production worldwide primarily comes from fossil fuels, which account for about 80% of total energy consumption, with coal, oil, and natural gas being the main sources."

So plug in that EV to your "about 80%...."

[EVO X]

How does an apartment dweller charge an ev?

You don't unless the apartment managers contract with a third party to manage a few level 2 chargers. Otherwise you charge at a commercial charger.

[maddog55]

An EV will never be in my driveway or garage. They’re reserved for real vehicles that also require a real person to drive them at all times.

[maddog55]

That may be one side of it but the mining required to get the lithium to make a battery for these crap cars and the power charging them probably eats the 1.2 million barrels easily.

[SisterK]

the mining required to get the lithium to make a battery for these crap cars and the power charging them probably eats the 1.2 million barrels easily

absolutely

right now the people in my rural county are fighting to stop giant solar arrays, battery storage and data centers
tptb want to turn open range into an ugly toxic waste dump

[Tell It Right]

You don't unless the apartment managers contract with a third party to manage a few level 2 chargers. Otherwise you charge at a commercial charger.

100% accurate. My wife and I love our EV and do most of our driving in it to save gas vs driving our gas pickup. But one reason it fits our use case is we set up chargers at home. Anyone who can't do that shouldn't consider an EV.

A second criteria is you ought to have a 2nd car, a gas car, for the times an EV won't do. My wife and I need two cars anyway, so our other car is a gas pickup and is an option for long trips that our EV wouldn't be good at (i.e. not enough fast chargers on the trip, or it's up north during the winter when charging an EV is slow).

The third criteria is number of miles driven, particularly home charged miles because that's the cheap charged miles. Our EV saves us lots in gas and oil changes, but only because we drive a lot. We average about 1,500 miles per month (18K miles annually) on home charged miles alone. If you don't drive a lot of home charged miles then an EV wouldn't save enough $ on gas and oil changes to be worth the extra costs of an EV.

Again, I'm not dissing EV's altogether. Ours is great for us. I'm simply pointing out the above 3 criteria for whether or not an EV is practical for each family.

From a moral perspective, this might be just my thinking, I probably wouldn't have considered an EV for us if it wasn't for the fact that we have tons of decentralized solar. If everyone in my area switched to an EV without also adding solar we'd all be an extra drain on the grid. Conversely last year, with our all electric home and charging our EV for 18K miles, we pulled a total of only 4,370 kWh from the grid (364 kWh / month). Virtually none of that was during the peak hours (here in the south the peak hours are hot summer afternoons, great times for free solar power).

[Cronos]

that’s net 1.2 million barrels of oil used less per day in 2025.

Very little electricity globally is generated using oil. Most power comes from coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables (such as solar and wind). that’s especially true for the countries in Asia that are referred to above.

as to “Organic fuels still make up the bulk of the source for electricity production I believe. Even with increasing “green” sourcing, that doesn’t even compare to what’s produced from nuclear.”

— that is true for the USA - Organic fossil fuels (primarily natural gas at ~39% and coal at ~13%) make up the bulk of U.S. electricity at over 50%.

- that is not true for China (i’m assuming by organic you aren’t including coal) or India - Wind, solar, and hydro combined generate nearly 45% of China’s electricity,5% comes from nuclear and a whopping 50% from coal.

For India coal alone generating roughly 69% of its electricity. Solar and wind capacity additions have hit record highs, bringing total green energy generation to roughly 22% to 25%. Nuclear energy is a minor player in India, contributing less than 3% of total electricity. the rest is from non-petrol organic sources - india doesn’t want to spend its money importing petrol from the middle east to burn.

[Tell It Right]

right now the people in my rural county are fighting to stop giant solar arrays, battery storage and data centers

Don't get me started on my disdain for making the grid depend on solar arrays and battery storage. I type that as someone with 20kW of decentralized solar with 90kWh of battery storage. But the key word is "decentralized". I see zero benefit from the grid depending on solar and batteries.

The only reason my solar is beneficial is because the word "decentralized" means it removes much of the political science from the equation. An all-electric home with solar is horribly inefficient from a physical science perspective. But there's real value when the only two "regulators" are God (who's in charge of the sunlight) and yourself (who's in charge of how that free solar energy is harnessed and utilized). That's not the case with solar on the grid. It's still has the horrible political science of too many bureaucrats but also has the bad physical science of solar and batteries (vs hydrocarbons).

[marktwain]

China now produces more power than Europe and the USA combined.

Electrical power is a direct measure of a countries power to make, build, and prosper.

Thank God the Trump administration is working hard at increasing the electrical power production in the USA.

[Cronos]

Wouat “Electricity production worldwide primarily comes from fossil fuels, which account for about 80% of total energy consumption, with coal, oil, and natural gas being the main sources.”

you are mixing up
1. total energy consumption
2. electricity generation

for #1 If you look at all energy used globally—including fueling cargo ships, flying planes, heavy manufacturing, and heating homes—fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) do indeed make up roughly 80% of total energy supply

for #2 When focusing strictly on electricity production (the power grid), fossil fuels do not account for 80%. Instead, they account for roughly 57%. The remaining 43% comes from low-carbon clean energy sources (renewables and nuclear).

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oil is almost never used to make electricity. Oil accounts for less than 2% of global electricity generation, as it is far too expensive and is almost exclusively reserved for transportation and petrochemicals

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[Cronos]

A vehicle is a vehicle - whether a horse buggy or an ICE car or an EV or a hybrid.

[arthurus]

displacing 1.2 million barrels

Redirecting most of that oil to the power plants that produce the electricity to operate the cars.

[Cronos]

maddog55 “the mining required to get the lithium to make a battery for these crap cars and the power charging them probably eats the 1.2 million barrels easily.”

Sorry but your The American poster’s math is completely wrong. The energy and oil used to mine battery materials and charge EVs does not even come close

The entire global mining industry (which digs up all the world’s coal, iron ore, copper, gold, and lithium combined) consumes roughly 2% to 3% of global energy.

Lithium is a minor fraction of global mining. A standard EV battery requires only about 8 to 12 kilograms (17 to 26 lbs) of lithium.

Saying that mining lithium “eats up the 1.2 million barrels easily” is like saying that building a water pipe uses more water than the pipe will transport over its entire lifetime.

[Cronos]

oil is almost never used to make electricity. Oil accounts for less than 2% of global electricity generation, as it is far too expensive and is almost exclusively reserved for transportation and petrochemicals

[Cronos]

Quite correct — ICEs, hybrids and EVs all have their place.

For the countries in the article - densely packed China, India, Vietnam etc., electric cars make sense in their large cities, but not in their rural areas.