EV sales head for a record 23.3 million, but split world

Global electric vehicle sales are heading for another record. BloombergNEF's Electric Vehicle Outlook 2026 expects 23.3 million passenger EVs to be sold worldwide this year, an 11 percent jump on 2025.

That means about 27 percent of all new cars sold globally in 2026 will be electric, up from just 9 percent five years ago.

Underneath the record, though, the report's real story is divergence. China remains the engine, but its market is maturing. Europe keeps climbing. Southeast Asia, India, Mexico, and Brazil are gaining momentum.

The United States is the awkward counterpoint. BloombergNEF says weaker federal support has pushed the US outlook down sharply, making it one of the markets where the road now looks slower than it did only a couple of years ago.

The counterweight is the rise of emerging markets, and this is the part that should interest African readers. EV adoption is no longer only a China, Europe, and California story.

The drivers BloombergNEF names, escaping oil-import bills, affordable Chinese brands, and EV-centred industrial policy, are available to any country that chooses them. That is exactly the conversation African policymakers are having.

The long game remains long. Electric cars on the road will take years to outnumber petrol ones, and more than a quarter of new cars this year is still a minority.

But the direction has stopped being a debate. The question the report really poses is which markets ride the wave and which watch it pass, and that is decided by policy, not physics.

For the global EV scoreboard behind those forecasts, see /business/byd-tesla-nio-june-2026-deliveries.

The EV transition is still global, but it no longer moves like one global market.