EV sales fell sharply in Q1
U.S. EV sales dropped 27% year-over-year in Q1 to 216,399 units, though the quarter-on-quarter decline was smaller at 7.8% and EV market share held near 6%. The numbers suggest the post-incentive correction is slowing but that EV volumes remain uneven across brands and geographies. (coxautoinc.com)
The United States electric-car market just had a quarter where sales fell hard from a year ago, but the bigger surprise is that the slide was much smaller than the panic at the end of 2025. Cox Automotive counted 216,399 new electric vehicles sold in the first quarter of 2026, down 27% from a year earlier and down 7.8% from the fourth quarter. (coxautoinc.com) That second number is the one car companies were watching. In the fourth quarter of 2025, electric-vehicle sales had fallen 36% from a year earlier and 46% from the prior quarter after federal purchase incentives ended, so the first quarter of 2026 looks less like a collapse and more like the market finding a lower floor. (coxautoinc.com) Electric cars also did not disappear from dealership lots. Their share of all new vehicles sold in the United States held at 5.8% in the first quarter, the same as the fourth quarter of 2025, even though that is far below the 10.6% peak reached in the third quarter of 2025 before the incentive deadline. (coxautoinc.com) The missing piece is the tax credit. Cox says the market was pulled forward into September 2025, when buyers rushed to qualify before government-backed incentives were terminated, which made late 2025 and early 2026 look weak by comparison. (coxautoinc.com; cnbc.com) That is why the year-over-year drop looks worse than the quarter-to-quarter drop. The first quarter of 2025 was still benefiting from a healthier incentive environment, while the first quarter of 2026 is the first cleaner read on what buyers will do when many electric cars have to compete more on sticker price, lease terms, and charging convenience. (coxautoinc.com) The brand split shows how uneven that new market is. Tesla still led with an estimated 117,300 United States sales in the quarter, but that was down from 128,100 a year earlier, while General Motors’ Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC brands together sold tens of thousands of electric vehicles and several smaller brands posted steep declines. (coxautoinc.com) Some brands were hit especially hard because they were starting from small bases or had few models. Ford sold 6,860 electric vehicles in the quarter versus 22,550 a year earlier, Hyundai sold 12,662 versus 12,851, and Kia rose to 4,456 from 1,454, which is the kind of spread you get when one market is really a collection of very different product launches and price points. (coxautoinc.com) There is also a second market growing underneath the headline. Cox said used electric-vehicle sales reached 30,879 units in February 2026, up 28.8% from a year earlier, which suggests some buyers who no longer see a new-car tax break are moving down one rung to cheaper secondhand models instead. (coxautoinc.com) Dealers are still carrying a lot of new electric inventory, even after some improvement. Cox said new electric-vehicle days’ supply was 130 days in February, down 27% from January but still 23.7% above year-earlier levels, which means discounts and leases are still doing a lot of the work that federal incentives used to do. (coxautoinc.com) So the first quarter did not say Americans are done with electric cars. It said the market is smaller without subsidies, steadier than it looked in late 2025, and much more dependent on which company has the right model, the right payment, and the right local charging story. (coxautoinc.com; coxautoinc.com)
