Elon Calls It a “Major Threshold” as Gas-Only Cars Drop Below Half of Global Sales

Image: Avda / Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk is calling it a “major threshold” after a post saying gasoline-only cars have fallen below 50% of global new-vehicle sales for the first time went viral on X on Wednesday. In a quote post, he wrote, “Major threshold passed. Almost all cars will be electric in the future.” The number itself is not new, since it comes from data that Nikkei Asia reported on October 2, but the post put it in front of millions of people this week.

In the first half of 2026, gasoline-only vehicles made up 49% of global new-vehicle sales, down from 52% a year earlier and 73% in 2021, with unit sales falling 10% to 20.25 million. Battery electric vehicles grew 12% to 6.87 million and reached a 17% share, which is above the 16% level often treated as a tipping point for mass adoption, while hybrids grew 10% to 7.27 million for an 18% share. The report ties the shift to high oil prices after the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, which pushed more buyers toward cars that use less fuel or none at all.

We ran the headline number in our gas cars story earlier this month, so here is what sits underneath it. Gasoline-only sales fell 26% in China and 13% in Europe, while battery electric sales rose 32% in Europe to 1.81 million, jumped 81% in Southeast Asia to 350,000 and more than doubled in Oceania to 110,000. China slipped 3% to 3.44 million after tax incentives were trimmed in January, though it still accounts for half of the world’s EV sales, and North America fell 15% after the US rolled back its EV incentives.

There is a catch that Musk’s post skips, which is that the 49% only counts cars that run on gasoline and nothing else. Hybrids outsold fully electric cars in the half, and the reported shares add up to 84%, so the remaining 16% or so is diesel, plug-in hybrids and other fuels, which means most new vehicles sold this year still came with an engine. The US is also the outlier in the picture, since the rollback of federal incentives left North America as the one major region where EV sales fell.

Tesla sits on both sides of that split. At home it sold an estimated 54% of America’s EVs in the third quarter, according to the figures in our Q3 story, even though its own US sales fell almost 20% from a year earlier. Abroad, Giga Shanghai wholesaled 95,366 cars in September, its best month of 2026, and Tesla’s German registrations jumped 268.7% in September while the Model Y finished as France’s best-selling car, as we covered in our September sales report.

Do you think EVs can overtake hybrids and gasoline cars before the end of the decade?