New Mobility Global data shows petrol-only vehicles took 49% of worldwide new-car sales in the first half of 2026, yet most of the cars replacing them still have a fuel tank.
For the first time on record, cars that run only on petrol make up less than half of the world’s new-vehicle sales. Mobility Global data, first reported by Nikkei, puts their share at 49% for the first half of 2026. In 2021, it was 73%.
That is a big shift in under five years. However, the detail is more complicated than the headline.
The numbers behind the milestone
Mobility Global, the data firm formerly known as S&P Global Mobility, counted 20.25 million petrol-only sales between January and June. That is 10% fewer than a year earlier, and their share fell from 52% to 49% in a single year.
Battery-electric vehicles grew 12% to 6.87 million units, taking 17% of the market. Conventional hybrids rose 10% to 7.27 million, or about 18%. Diesel, plug-in hybrids and minor fuels make up the rest.
The IEA estimates that the overall market shrank by about 5% over the half. In other words, petrol-only sales fell twice as fast as the market itself.
Oil prices and regional swings
Nikkei links the faster decline to fuel prices, which spiked with the conflict in the Middle East. China recorded the steepest fall in petrol-only sales, down 26%, followed by Europe at 13%. In the EU, ACEA data has battery-electric registrations narrowly ahead of petrol for the year through August.
Electric growth varied widely by region:
- Europe: up 32% to 1.81 million
- Southeast Asia: up 81% to 350,000
- Oceania: more than doubled to 110,000
- China: down 3% to 3.44 million, still half the global total
- North America: down 15%
Yoshiaki Kawano, an associate director at Mobility Global, told Nikkei that few EV buyers go back to petrol or hybrid cars.
Read the label
Here’s the catch. A conventional hybrid still runs entirely on petrol, only more efficiently, and hybrids outsold EVs over the period. Once you add diesels and plug-ins, roughly 83% of new vehicles sold worldwide this year still had an engine.
These figures also cover only six months, and those months included an oil shock. The full-year result could look different.
The American exception
Commentators often point to the United States as the outlier. Cox Automotive expects about 239,000 EV sales in the third quarter. That would be around 45% down on a year ago, when buyers rushed to beat the 30 September federal tax credit deadline. Ford has reported an 80% fall in its EV sales for the quarter.
Even so, Cox’s second-quarter figures don’t show a return to petrol-only cars. Hybrid volume rose 23% to a record 16.3% share, and electrified vehicles overall grew from 22.4% to 23.2% of the market. Petrol prices of about US$4.50 a gallon, up 41% on last year, are part of the background.
The engine is far from finished. What has changed is the typical new car. Worldwide, it is no longer a petrol-only model, and even in the US the slowdown in EV sales has mostly benefited hybrids.
