MachinesData brief
16.5%
Battery-electric share, 2025 (IEA)
Plug-ins took 25% of global car sales in 2025, up from 0.7% in 2015
IEA data shows how fast plug-ins grew, and why 'gas cars under 50%' is a narrower claim than it sounds.
- Plug-in hybrid share, 2025 (IEA)
- 8.5%
- Plug-ins total, 2015
- 0.7%
- Gasoline-only, H1 2026 (Mobility Global via Electrek)
- 49%, down from 73% in 2021
Electrek reports that gasoline-only cars made up 49% of global new-vehicle sales in the first half of 2026, down from 73% in 2021, citing Mobility Global data first reported by Nikkei. The same report says battery-electric cars took 17% and conventional hybrids 18%.
The IEA series covers a different slice: plug-in cars. Battery-electric share rose from about 0.4% in 2015 to 16.5% in 2025, and plug-in hybrids from 0.2% to 8.5%. Together that is 25% of roughly 85 million cars, so about 75% of 2025 sales were still gasoline, diesel or non-plug hybrids.
Watch the hybrids. Gasoline-only can drop below half while most of the replacement cars still burn fuel. The IEA plug-in line and the Mobility Global gasoline-only line measure different things, so they should not be subtracted from each other.
Data, method and caveats
- IEA Global EV Data Explorer (API: EV sales, EV sales share, World, Cars) CC BY 4.0 (IEA) · captured 2026-10-07
- Our World in Data, Share of new cars that are electric (IEA mirror, cross-check) CC BY 4.0 · captured 2026-10-07
- Electrek (Mobility Global / Nikkei figures, news only) news report, figures quoted not reproduced · captured 2026-10-07
- The 'gas cars below 50%' figure is Mobility Global's gasoline-only share (49% in H1 2026). It excludes conventional hybrids (18%), diesel and plug-in hybrids. That series is proprietary and could not be charted; no open dataset gives gasoline-only share by year.
- The chart shows IEA plug-in shares (BEV + PHEV) through 2025; it has no 2026 data and no split of conventional hybrids. The grey band is everything that is not a plug-in, so it includes hybrids.
- Totals are rounded to two significant figures in the IEA API, so BEV and PHEV splits (computed as EV share x BEV or PHEV share of EV sales) carry roughly 1 point of rounding error. Fuel-cell cars (a few thousand a year) fall in the plug-in total.
- IEA covers passenger cars; Mobility Global covers new light vehicles, which may include light commercial vehicles. Do not combine the two series.
This brief as JSON or Markdown. Reuse the chart with credit to Tec N Trend and the sources above.