Europe set an EV sales record in September while North America dropped 44%

Europe sold almost 600,000 electric vehicles in September, up 39 percent from a year earlier and the highest monthly total the region has recorded, according to data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. North America sold about 130,000, down 44 percent, its steepest annual decline of 2026.

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The two numbers sit on opposite sides of a global market that was almost flat, and the reason for the North American collapse is mostly a matter of what September 2025 looked like.

Europe’s record month

The figures, reported by Electrek on Oct. 15 and covering battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, put Europe at 0.60 million in September, up 62 percent from August and 10 percent above the previous monthly record set in June. Battery-electric sales grew 50 percent year over year and plug-in hybrids grew 16 percent. The year-to-date total stands at 3.9 million, up 30 percent.

Several countries set their own highs. The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal and Finland each posted their best month ever for EV sales. France rose 78 percent to almost 80,000 units, and Germany rose 61 percent to 117,000. UK sales were more than 3.5 times the August total, partly because September is when new registration plates create a seasonal surge, with EVs holding roughly 40 percent of UK sales, about flat from August.

The momentum was already visible a month earlier, and the September figure extends it. In August, according to Benchmark’s release on that month, Europe’s EV sales rose 36 percent year over year and Charles Lester, Benchmark’s data manager, called the region the strongest performing one. France reached a record 41 percent EV share that month.

North America and the expired tax credit

North America’s 44 percent drop compares September 2026 with September 2025, which Electrek describes as the final month before the U.S. federal $7,500 EV tax credit expired. Buyers who had been waiting pulled purchases forward into that month, so the base for the comparison was unusually high. The September 2026 total was also 8 percent below August, and the region’s year-to-date sales of 1.2 million are down 24 percent.

Benchmark cautions against reading the drop as a sudden collapse in demand. Lester said the comparison changes soon: “From the fourth quarter, the comparison will be against the months immediately after the credit’s removal.” That means year-over-year figures should look much less severe from October onward, though the report is careful to say a milder comparison does not mean sales have recovered.

The decline has been building for months, and the data shows it is not confined to one bad quarter. In August, North America was down 33 percent year over year to about 140,000 vehicles, a pattern Electrek covered in its September report and one Benchmark attributed to the rush that preceded the credit’s end. September’s 44 percent is the widest gap yet in that run.

Benchmark made the same point about the earlier month. Lester said the August fall reflected the comparison with the 2025 buying rush “rather than a sign of a sudden new drop in demand.” Read together with the September figures, the year-over-year line for North America is distorted by one unusually strong base period, and the absolute level of about 130,000 vehicles a month, down 8 percent from August, is the better indicator of where demand sits today.

China, the rest of the world and the global total

Globally, 2.15 million EVs were sold in September, down 2 percent year over year but up 17 percent from August, with 15.5 million sold so far this year, up 3 percent. China remained the largest market at 1.11 million, up 7 percent from August but down 18 percent from a year earlier, with plug-in hybrids the main drag: their sales are down 25 percent this year against a 6 percent decline for battery-electric cars. The rest of the world, outside China, Europe and North America, grew 81 percent to 0.31 million, and its 2.3 million sales so far this year are nearly double North America’s total of 1.2 million.

Falling EV sales in China do not mean buyers switched to gasoline, and the Chinese industry kept production steady while shipping more abroad; Electrek reports new energy vehicle exports hit a monthly record of 558,000 in September. Electrek, citing data from the China Passenger Car Association, says Chinese gasoline car sales fell 43 percent to 534,000 in September. A separate report on the same association’s figures puts total light passenger vehicle retail sales down 28 percent to 1.603 million, the twelfth straight monthly decline, while exports of built-up and knocked-down vehicles rose 74 percent to 917,000 units.

Policy changes could reshape that export flow. Electrek reports that a pending EU-China agreement, which still needs member-state approval, would cap imports of Chinese-built battery and plug-in hybrid vehicles at 350,000 in 2027, and that China’s export VAT rebate on new energy vehicles falls from 13 percent to 9 percent on April 1, 2027. The underlying figures come from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a supplier of energy transition supply chain data, and the next monthly reading will be the first to compare North American sales with the period after the credit ended, which is the test Lester described.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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