Four measures of electric car adoption across 56 markets, from 2010 to 2025.
Source: IEA Global EV Outlook, via Our World in Data. Electric cars include both battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Coverage is limited to the roughly fifty markets the IEA tracks, so most of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are absent from the data rather than at zero. The gap between sales share and fleet share is the important one: it measures how long a vehicle fleet takes to turn over even where new sales have shifted almost entirely.
This is the distinction the map exists to make.
In Norway, 97% of new cars sold are electric. Only 36% of cars on the road are. Both figures are current, and the gap between them is the most instructive number in electric vehicle data.
Cars last fifteen to twenty years. A country can switch its entire new-car market and still have a majority-petrol fleet a decade later, because the existing vehicles do not disappear when better ones arrive. Emissions come from the fleet, not from the showroom.
Headlines almost always cite sales share, because it is the larger and more encouraging number. It describes the direction of travel. Fleet share describes where things actually stand.
For anyone modelling transport emissions, the fleet figure is the one that matters, and it lags the sales figure by roughly a decade.
Coverage is limited to major auto markets. The IEA tracks around fifty countries. Most of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are absent from the data rather than at zero. This map has more grey than the others on this site, and that absence is itself informative about where the transition is being measured.
Electric includes plug-in hybrids. Battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are counted together. Their emissions profiles differ substantially, and a market dominated by plug-in hybrids is at an earlier stage than the headline share suggests.
Sales volumes favour large markets. China sells more electric cars than the rest of the world combined, which tells you about scale rather than about transition. The share metrics are the better comparison.
The electricity behind them matters. An electric car charged on a coal grid is cleaner than a petrol car, but not by as much as one charged on hydro. Read this alongside the energy mix map.
Related work:
Data from the IEA Global EV Outlook, via Our World in Data.