Where Gas Cars Are Already Extinct? Ergo new car sales?

Why are EV cars dominating in nations like Norway and China? In Norway's case the gov has created massive tax incentives which drive purchasing behavior. Rather heavy handed.

China wants to take over the world's supply of EV cars and heavily subsidizes the cost of such at home.

Where Gas Cars Are Already Extinct

World Population Review

Sept 2, 2026

From Norway's near-total switch to China's 44-million-ev fleet.

Something quietly historic happened in 2025: one in four new cars sold worldwide was electric. That's not a niche technology anymore—it's a genuine mainstream shift, and it's happening at wildly different speeds depending on where you live.

So which countries actually own the most electric cars? Where are gas-powered cars becoming the exception rather than the rule? And where is the switch happening fastest right now?

Let's dive in.

1. Where Electric Cars Have Already Taken Over the Roads

Total sales numbers get the headlines, but the more revealing question is what share of cars already on the road are electric—not just what's being sold today.

🇳🇴 Norway leads the planet by a wide margin: more than a third of its entire car fleet is now electric, the highest share anywhere on Earth.

🇩🇰 Denmark is the only country in the European Union with an electric stock share above 20%, reflecting years of aggressive tax incentives.

🇨🇳 China, despite having the largest EV fleet in absolute terms, sits at 13% of its total car stock—still a minority, just a very large one.

Across the European Union as a whole, only about 5% of the car fleet is electric, a reminder of just how far ahead Norway and Denmark have pulled from their neighbors.

💡 Worth sitting with: the gap between "leading the sales charts" and "actually replacing the fleet" is enormous—it takes years for high sales shares to translate into a meaningfully electrified stock of cars already on the road.

2. Where Electric Cars Are Now the Default Choice

Stock share shows the accumulated result. Sales share shows the direction things are actually heading, right now.

🇳🇴 Norway again tops the list, with roughly 97% of new car sales in 2025 being electric—gas-powered cars have become the rare exception.

🇻🇳 Vietnam follows at nearly 40%, the highest share anywhere in Southeast Asia, driven almost entirely by the domestic automaker VinFast.

🇬🇧 The United Kingdom crossed the one-in-three threshold in 2025, and 🇩🇪 Germany and 🇺🇾 Uruguay both landed around 30%.

🇫🇷 France rounded out the group at roughly 25%.

🔎 A genuine surprise: Uruguay, a country of just 3.4 million people, now sells electric cars at nearly the same rate as Germany—proof that this shift isn't limited to wealthy Northern European nations.

3. The World's Biggest EV Markets by Volume

Percentage share favors small countries. Raw volume tells a completely different story—and one country dwarfs the entire rest of the planet combined.

🇨🇳 China sold more than 13 million electric cars in 2025 alone—six out of every ten EVs sold anywhere in the world.

🇺🇸 The United States was a distant second at roughly 1.5 million, and 🇩🇪 Germany led Europe at 850,000, a record high.

🇧🇷 Brazil, 🇮🇳 India, and 🇹🇭 Thailand rounded out the top six, each selling well over 100,000 electric cars for the first time.

The scale gap here is staggering: China alone sold roughly nine times as many EVs as the entire United States market.

📊 Worth remembering: these six countries alone likely account for the overwhelming majority of every electric car sold on Earth in 2025.

4. Where EV Sales Are Growing Fastest

Some markets are still small in absolute terms, but they're accelerating faster than anywhere else on the planet.

🇲🇽 Mexico roughly tripled its electric car sales in a single year, the fastest growth rate of any major market.

🇵🇱 Poland followed close behind at 125% growth, and 🇻🇳 Vietnam more than doubled its sales year-on-year.

🇪🇸 Spain, 🇹🇭 Thailand, and 🇮🇹 Italy all posted growth rates between 65% and 80%—genuinely explosive by the standards of any mature industry.

None of these countries were considered EV markets worth watching even three years ago. Now they're among the fastest-growing anywhere.

🔮 A prediction worth holding onto: if even a fraction of this growth continues, several of these countries could crack the global top ten in absolute volume within just a few years.

5. Where Electric Cars Are Now as Cheap as Gas Cars

Price has always been the biggest barrier to EV adoption—and in a handful of countries, that barrier has essentially disappeared.

🇲🇽 Mexico saw electric car prices fall to almost the same level as conventional cars in 2025, largely thanks to a flood of competitively priced Chinese imports.

🇹🇷 Turkey cut its average EV price premium to just 10%, down from over 30% the year before.

🇧🇷 Brazil nearly halved its premium to about 15%, and 🇩🇪 Germany's small electric cars now cost only about 20% more than their gas equivalents.

🇮🇩 Indonesia and 🇲🇾 Malaysia still carry steeper premiums, at roughly 40% and 65%—a reminder that affordability gains haven't arrived everywhere at once.

🔎 The mechanism behind it: in nearly every case, the driving force is the same—an influx of lower-cost Chinese-made electric models undercutting domestic pricing.

6. The Second-Hand EV Market: A Tale of Two Countries

Most people don't buy new cars—they buy used ones. That makes the resale market just as important as new sales for how quickly EVs actually spread.

🇩🇪 Germany recorded around 400,000 used electric car sales in 2025, the highest volume in Europe, representing just over 6% of its entire used car market.

🇺🇸 The United States, despite being a much larger overall car market, sold fewer used EVs than Germany—under 400,000, representing just 2.5% of used car sales.

The difference reflects how much longer Germany's EV market has had to mature, giving more electric cars time to cycle into second ownership.

💡 Worth noting: roughly 40% of used EVs sold in the US went for under $25,000, with a used Nissan Leaf sometimes available for as little as $12,000—proof that budget-friendly electric ownership already exists, if you're willing to buy used.

7. Africa's Early EV Pioneers

Electric car adoption in Africa remains tiny by global standards, but a handful of countries are quietly getting started.

🇪🇬 Egypt led the continent with roughly 7,900 electric car sales in 2025.

🇲🇦 Morocco followed at about 5,500, and 🇿🇦 South Africa at roughly 3,800.

Together, these three countries accounted for nearly 70% of all electric car sales across the entire African continent last year—a reminder of how concentrated even early-stage adoption can be.

🔎 The bigger picture: Africa's total electric car sales grew sixfold between 2023 and 2025, from around 4,000 to roughly 25,000—still minuscule globally, but among the fastest relative growth rates anywhere.