US EV Market Down 21% in Q2 2026, But ….

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all of the high-quality, original content we publish week after week despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.

Yes, the USA EV market is still down compared to the year before. US EV sales dropped 21% from 311,536 sales in Q2 2025 to 247,226 sales in Q2 2026. Not great. That said, there are a few positive things to note.

For example, this is the best quarter the US market has had since the booming, record-breaking 3rd quarter of 2025 (which was boosted by the fact that the US EV tax credit was about to expire). The 247,226 sales of last quarter were higher than the 234,255 sales of Q4 2025 or the 216,399 sales of Q1 2026. So, the market is rebuilding again.

Okay, let’s look at a few charts before I get to my last positive point. (Static versions of these charts are also on the bottom of the article.)

So, yeah, this wasn’t our best 2nd quarter ever. In fact, the last three years have seen better 2nd quarters. A 25% drop compared to Q2 2024 is really not uplifting.

However, all of that said, the US EV market was 27%, or 52,000+ sales, higher than Q2 2022, and it was up 109%, by almost a whopping 130,000 sales, compared to Q2 2021. That is progress.

All of that said, EVs had just 5.9% of the overall US auto market in the 2nd quarter. That’s completely embarrassing. China is at 43%! Europe is at 22%. Several South American countries have just zoomed past us. We are falling way behind and are a disgrace compared to much of the rest of the world’s auto market, and we’d be even much more so if not for Tesla….