# EV choice is growing, but the market still tilts big > The IEA's Global EV Outlook shows more choice, but also a stubborn bias toward large cars and SUVs. For price-sensitive markets, that is the part that matters. Author: Tim Humphreys Published: 2026-07-03T11:00:00.000Z Updated: 2026-07-03T11:00:00.000Z Canonical: /news/ev-model-explosion-suv-bias ## Why it matters The EV era is arriving with plenty of large vehicles. If affordable small electric cars stay scarce, entire markets, including much of Africa, get left waiting. ## Story The world has never had more electric cars to choose from, but the menu is still tilted toward bigger, more expensive vehicles. The International Energy Agency's Global EV Outlook 2026 says 630 battery-electric car models were available globally in 2025. That is real choice compared with only a few years ago, but availability alone does not solve affordability. The striking detail is the shape of demand and supply. Large cars and SUVs accounted for almost 70 percent of the global EV market in 2025, and in the United States, more than 85 percent of electric models were large cars or SUVs. The economics behind the bias are simple. Big vehicles carry big margins, and batteries are expensive, so carmakers have leaned toward formats where the battery cost hides inside a premium price. The result is an EV market rich in large family crossovers and thin on the compact, cheap runabouts that many drivers actually need. That gap matters everywhere, and it matters acutely in Africa. The IEA repeatedly identifies affordability as a key barrier to EV adoption, while the Africa financing research we covered shows that cost, not battery science, is now the central fight. See /business/evs-cheaper-than-petrol-africa-financing. A catalogue that keeps swelling with large, costly formats does little for markets where the entry price is the entire battle. It also cedes the affordable ground to the handful of players, mostly Chinese brands, actually building small, cheaper EVs at scale. There are counter-currents worth naming. Chinese manufacturers keep pushing compact models, price competition has dragged EV prices down in several markets, and the used-EV pipeline is starting to reach import-dependent countries. But the headline stands: the EV model boom is real, and it is still weighted toward buyers who need less help. Watch not only how many EVs exist, but how many exist below the price of a mid-range petrol car. ## Sources - [IEA: Global EV Outlook 2026](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2026) - [IEA: Trends in electric cars](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2026/trends-in-electric-cars) The affordable-EV question is not whether the world can build electric cars. It is whether it builds enough of the right ones.