September was the best month ever for electric cars in Europe — and one of the worst on record in North America. Battery-electric registrations across 17 key European markets surged 70.3% year over year to 300,202 vehicles, giving EVs a 32.6% share of all new-car registrations, according to Reuters data published Monday. Year to date, 1.98 million EVs have been registered across Europe, up 38.1% from the same stretch of last year.
Across the Atlantic, the picture inverted. North American EV sales fell 44% year over year to about 130,000 vehicles — the region’s steepest percentage drop of 2026 — dragging global EV sales down 2% to 2.15 million and snapping six straight months of growth, Electrek reports, citing Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data.
A Record Built on Oil Prices, Subsidies, and Cheaper Models
High oil prices, purchase subsidies, and a wave of more affordable models are doing the heavy lifting in Europe. France was the standout: a 41.7% EV share on 65,243 registrations. Germany hit 34.6% with 88,724. The Nordics remain the most electrified corner of the continent — Norway at a staggering 98.8%, Denmark 88.8%, Finland 62.7%, Sweden 49.0% — while roughly half of new registrations in Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands are now electric. The laggards: the Czech Republic at 11.2%, Italy 7.6%, Poland 6.2%.
Broader figures from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which also count plug-in hybrids, show Europe sold nearly 600,000 EVs in September, up 39% — beating the previous record set in June by 10%. France, Spain, Portugal, Finland, and the UK all posted their best EV months ever.
North America’s 44% Plunge Comes With a Catch
The North America figure looks like a collapse — and in one sense it is: 1.2 million EVs sold through September, down 24% year over year. But September 2025 was the final month before the US federal $7,500 EV tax credit expired, so buyers pulled purchases forward into a record month that this year’s number is being measured against. Charles Lester, Benchmark’s data manager, told Electrek that “from the fourth quarter, the comparison will be against the months immediately after the credit’s removal, when US EV sales collapsed, so the year-on-year picture should improve markedly”
China Stalls, Then Ships Its Problem Abroad
China, still by far the largest EV market, sold 1.11 million EVs in September — down 18% year over year, a deeper decline than August’s 11% drop. But falling EV sales don’t mean drivers are going back to gas: Chinese gasoline-car sales are down 43% year on year. Instead, automakers kept factories running and exported the surplus — China’s new-energy-vehicle exports hit a monthly record of 558,000 in September.
Two policy changes could choke that export valve next year. An EU–China agreement, still subject to member-state approval, would cap imports of Chinese-built EVs at 350,000 a year from 2027, rising 6% annually after its first year. And China will cut its export VAT rebate for new-energy vehicles from 13% to 9% on April 1, 2027.
Why This Matters
Here is the paradox the straight data-dumps miss: this record month arrived the same week France and Germany cut a deal to soften proposed EU car-emissions rules — the very policies that helped EVs to a third of the European market. Europe is simultaneously accelerating its EV transition and easing the pressure that made it happen. If the softened rules survive, the record may mark a high-water mark rather than a midpoint.
For American readers, the starker number is the gap: EVs are roughly a third of new-car sales in Europe and still stuck in single digits in the US, one year after the tax credit’s death. Tesla reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and the question is whether it can keep growing deliveries in a US market that has shrunk by nearly a quarter this year. The rest of the world, meanwhile, bought 310,000 EVs in September — up 81%, nearly twice North America’s total.
Meanwhile in Cars & EVs: how the US market actually rebounded in Q3 despite the tax-credit hangover, and what Tesla’s 486,532 Q3 deliveries signal ahead of earnings.
