About 130,000 electric vehicles were sold in North America in September 2026, a fall of 44% from the same month a year earlier, while Europe set a monthly record of almost 600,000, up 39%. Both figures come from the monthly tally kept by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which counts battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars together. Worldwide, the total reached 2.15 million, down 2% on the year.
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The North American drop is the steepest monthly percentage decline the region has recorded in 2026, yet the comparison is unusually harsh. September 2025 was the final month before the U.S. federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for new electric vehicles expired, so a large number of buyers rushed to close purchases before the deadline. A year later, the same month is measured against that surge rather than against a normal baseline.
What Benchmark counted in North America
According to the Electrek report on the figures, North American sales of roughly 130,000 vehicles were also down 8% from August, and the year-to-date total stands at 1.2 million, a decline of 24%. That year-to-date number matters because it is not distorted by a single month: the region is selling about a quarter fewer electric vehicles than in the first nine months of 2025, a gap that widened from 21% at the end of August.
The cause is mostly legal rather than commercial. The Internal Revenue Service page for the new clean vehicle credit states that the credit is not available for vehicles acquired after Sept. 30, 2025, and that it was worth up to $7,500 for a qualifying plug-in or fuel cell vehicle. The credit had originally been written to run through 2032 under the Inflation Reduction Act, a schedule that Spectrum News described in June 2025 while the Senate debated the bill that moved the cutoff up.
Benchmark itself cautions against reading the number as a sudden collapse in demand. Charles Lester, the firm’s data manager, said the year-over-year comparison from October onward will be against the months immediately after the credit’s removal, when U.S. sales had already fallen sharply. Benchmark’s own September sales write-up expects the annual declines to narrow significantly, which would reflect an easier base rather than a rebound.
Europe’s record month, country by country
Europe’s almost 600,000 sales beat the previous monthly high, set in June, by about 10%, and rose 62% from August. Battery-electric vehicles grew 50% year over year, while plug-in hybrids grew 16%. Germany sold 117,000 electrified vehicles, up 61%, and France reached almost 80,000, up 78%. The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal and Finland each recorded their best month ever.
The British figure carries a caveat that Benchmark spells out. UK sales ran more than 3.5 times higher than in August, but September is when new registration plates are issued, which lifts the whole car market every year. Electric vehicles held a share of about 40% of new cars, broadly unchanged from August, so part of the jump is seasonal calendar rather than fresh enthusiasm. Across the continent, year-to-date sales have reached 3.9 million, up 30%.
Chinese manufacturers are a growing part of that European story. Benchmark reports that Chinese-built vehicles made up about 14% of plug-in hybrids sold across the European Union, EFTA countries and the United Kingdom in 2025, and that the share has climbed to 29% so far in 2026. A pending agreement between the EU and China, which still needs member-state approval, would cap imports of Chinese-built hybrids at 350,000 a year from 2027.
China and the rest of the world
China, the largest single market, sold 1.11 million electrified vehicles in September, up 7% from August but down 18% year over year, a steeper fall than the 11% decline in August. Year-to-date sales of 8.1 million are down 13%, with plug-in hybrids off 25% and battery-electric cars off 6%. Benchmark notes that the weak domestic market is hitting gasoline cars at least as hard, so the electric share remains strong. Electrek adds that, according to the China Passenger Car Association, gasoline car sales in China fell 43% year over year to 534,000 in September, a sign that the electric decline is not a shift back to combustion engines.
Weak demand at home has pushed Chinese automakers to hold production steady and ship the surplus abroad, with new-energy passenger-car exports reaching a monthly record of 558,000 in September. A separate change could complicate that strategy: China will cut its export value-added-tax rebate for new energy vehicles from 13% to 9% on April 1, 2027, which raises costs for overseas sales.
Outside the big three regions, the picture is the opposite of North America’s. Sales in the rest of the world rose 81% in September to about 310,000, and the 2.3 million sold so far this year, up 93%, is nearly double the North American total. A separate Electric Cars Report summary of the same data notes that its North America figures cover the whole region and are not broken out for the United States alone, a limit worth keeping in mind when reading the 44% figure as an American one. The gap between the regions is therefore partly arithmetic and partly policy: Europe set its record in a month with no such distortion, while North America is being compared against a month the tax credit made unusually strong.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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