Electric Cars Hit 28% of New Sales as China Supplies 60% of the Global Market

Electric Cars Hit 28% of New Sales as China Supplies 60% of the Global Market The IEA expects EVs near 30% of 2026 car sales, with Chinese makers supplying most of them — a slow erosion of long-run oil demand. A record 28% of new cars sold worldwide so far in 2026 were electric, Canary Media reported on 2026-06-05, even as American buyers keep balking.⁶ The International Energy Agency expects EVs to reach nearly 30% of global car sales this year, around 23 million units, the agency said on Wednesday (2026-05-20) in its Global EV Outlook.¹ For oil, the trajectory matters more than any single year's share. Global EV sales topped 21 million units last year, more than double the 2022 figure when annual sales first crossed 10 million, the IEA said.⁴ One in four new cars sold worldwide in 2025 was electric, with about 40 countries recording market shares above 10%.¹ Chinese automakers supplied roughly 60% of electric cars sold globally last year, while European and North American manufacturers each accounted for about 15%, the IEA said.¹ Chinese brands now hold 20% of the hybrid market and 11% of EV sales, the Economist reported, even as German carmakers' share of the Chinese market slipped to 17% from a 2020 peak of 27%, on Rhodium figures.² That reversal is what alarms European manufacturers.² The same Chinese firms are now exporting aggressively into Europe, and the cost gap is structural rather than cyclical. For Germany, whose export accounts lean heavily on the internal-combustion car, the threat is to the franchise itself, not a single quarter's deliveries.² The growth is not linear. Global EV sales fell 8% in the first quarter of 2026 after policy shifts in China and the United States, the IEA noted, though many regions kept posting gains.¹ Subsidy withdrawal and tariff fights can stall the curve for a quarter or two. They have not reversed it. Electricity now accounts for roughly 30% of China's final energy consumption, above levels in Europe or the United States, on figures cited by Oilprice.³ A fleet running on domestically generated power is insulated from oil-price shocks and from the dollar-denominated crude market Beijing cannot control. China treats electrification as an energy-security hedge as much as a climate policy.³ That inverts the usual European response. Every oil-price spike in Europe triggers the same round of subsidy debates and OPEC-strategy analysis, premised on oil staying central to transport.³ China is removing that premise from a growing slice of its own demand.³ The crude tape shows little urgency about any of this. ICE Brent crude front-month sat at $86.80 and Dubai at $86.93 as of Saturday's snapshot (2026-06-14), prices that assume oil stays central to transport.³ The displacement bites at the margin, shaving gasoline growth rather than collapsing the balance, even as global EV sales have more than doubled since 2022.⁴ For European power and carbon, the read-through runs the other way. A larger EV fleet adds incremental electricity demand, which over time supports power prices and, through the generation mix, EUA demand.¹ The effect is small for now and swamped by gas: ICE Endex TTF front-month fell about 4% to €46.77 as of Saturday's snapshot (2026-06-14), which sets European power economics far more than new battery registrations.¹ China's leverage extends to the supply side too. Beijing has halted exports of several heavy rare earths and gallium to Japan since December, Japan NRG reported, raising concern that critical-mineral supply chains are becoming diplomatic leverage.⁵ The same minerals sit inside the EVs and grid hardware the transition depends on, a market China dominates on demand and gates on supply.⁵ Watch the second-quarter EV sales print after the first-quarter 8% dip.¹ If that decline proves a policy air-pocket rather than a turn, the IEA's 23 million-unit forecast holds, and the slow subtraction from oil's transport base continues regardless of where ICE Brent crude front-month trades this summer.¹