E.V. Sales Are Rising After the Gulf Oil Shock. Here’s Where.

Around the globe, electric vehicles are gaining fresh momentum as the U.S. war with Iran, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have caused oil and gasoline prices to spike.

The rise of electric vehicles is upending international car markets. Total sales of traditional cars with internal combustion engines have been in a steady decline, and this year, they’re expected to reach their lowest level since the early 2000s.

Meanwhile, a record 29 percent of all new cars sold around the world this year are expected to be powered by electricity, including fully battery-powered models and plug-in hybrids, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency. That’s a sharp increase from just 4 percent in 2020.

In South Africa, sales of electric cars more than quintupled in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year. In Laos, imports of battery-powered vehicles from China are soaring. And in countries as different as Australia, Colombia and South Korea, the E.V. share of total new car sales has nearly doubled since the fighting in Iran began.

Part of what makes the global rise in electric car sales this year so unusual is that E.V. purchases actually fell in both China and the United States, the world’s two largest automobile markets.

In China, which accounts for roughly half of all E.V. sales worldwide, a weakening economy and reduction in government subsidies led to a drop in overall purchases this year. (While electric vehicles improved their market share, the total number of cars sold declined in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2025.) China still has roughly as many electric vehicles on the road as the rest of the world combined, a trend that has noticeably curtailed the nation’s oil use.

The United States also saw a dip in sales this spring after Republicans in Congress phased out a $7,500 tax credit for electric cars last year. The Biden administration had pushed to expand the credit to help fight climate change, since electric vehicles produce fewer emissions than their gasoline- or diesel-powered counterparts.

Yet higher oil prices have pushed customers to go electric in many other markets.

Since the Iran war began in February, the price of Brent crude, a global benchmark for oil, has increased more than 25 percent. Over that timeframe, E.V. sales have roughly doubled in Australia, Brazil, India and South Korea compared with the same period in 2025.

Car sales fluctuate for a variety of reasons — including government policies, economic conditions and the availability of new models — but there is good reason to think that at least some of this year’s E.V. boom is related to the spike in the price of oil and gasoline. Online searches for electric vehicles have increased significantly since the war began, according to an ***ysis by BloombergNEF, with some of the biggest increases in countries that have seen the largest rise in fuel prices.

Andrew Grant, an ***yst at BloombergNEF, said that some of the increase in sales this spring could be consumers who had already been planning to buy an electric car and simply sped up their purchases. Still, he said, “as we see sustained or higher oil prices, you probably will get higher E.V. sales than what you might have seen otherwise.”

More than a dozen governments have also announced new policies to encourage electric vehicle adoption since the conflict began, as countries have sought to curb their imports of expensive oil. Ireland and the Netherlands introduced programs to encourage drivers to trade in their older combustion-engine vehicles for electric models. Chile provided incentives for buses and taxis to go electric. Spain extended electric vehicle tax credits for consumers. China has set new goals to electrify its trucks.

“The crisis has clearly reinforced the case for E.V.s as a way to address energy security and fuel cost concerns,” the International Energy Agency said in a report last month. The agency noted that vehicles on the road account for roughly half of the world’s oil use.

Even if sales have slowed in China, the growing popularity of electric cars worldwide has been a boon for the country that produces more of them than anywhere else. Chinese companies have already exported roughly 2.4 million electric vehicles in the first half of this year, nearly as many as they did in all of 2025, according to the I.E.A.

Although policymakers in Europe and the United States have eyed China’s growing dominance of the global car market with alarm, many countries have welcomed low-cost Chinese electric vehicles as a way to save money on fuel.

In Argentina, Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and South Africa, imported Chinese models make up more than 80 percent of electric car sales. Since the war began, a number of countries, including Cambodia and Kenya, have temporarily slashed tariffs on imported electric vehicles. In Laos, the government went further and barred imports of gasoline-powered cars for the rest of 2026 while cutting taxes on electric cars — leading to a rush of Chinese E.V.s.

One big question is what would happen to global E.V. sales if the conflict in Iran stopped and the Strait of Hormuz were reopened, leading to a drop in global oil prices.

In the short term, electric car sales could slow somewhat if drivers are no longer fretting as much about the price of gas. But over the long run, many ***ysts think that battery-powered vehicles will continue to win out.

Currently, in many car markets, an electric car is more expensive to purchase upfront than a comparable gasoline- or diesel-powered model, which tends to be the biggest consideration for most consumers. But that could change within the next three to five years if battery prices continue to fall, Mr. Grant of BloombergNEF said. (Batteries are typically the most expensive part of these vehicles.)

“Oil prices will rise and fall, but the fundamental economics of batteries becoming cheaper, in our view, means that more E.V.s will be sold over time,” Mr. Grant said.

At the same time, even with higher upfront costs, electric vehicles tend to be cheaper to operate over their lifetimes, thanks to lower fuel and maintenance costs. That’s a bigger consideration for some people, such as ride-sharing drivers who might drive three to five times as much each year as an ordinary driver. Those drivers are already adopting electric vehicles at a somewhat higher rate, Mr. Grant said.