Americans bought 266,630 electric cars in the third quarter of 2026, according to Kelley Blue Book estimates published by Cox Automotive on 12 October. That is 38.6% fewer than in the same quarter of 2025, and 7.7% more than in the second quarter of this year. Both numbers are true, and the distance between them is the story of the American EV market since the federal tax credit ended.
Why the comparison is lopsided
The quarter it is measured against was a one-off. The $7,500 federal credit expired on 30 September 2025 and buyers rushed to beat it: Cox counted a record 438,487 EVs in Q3 2025, 10.5% of all new cars, with Tesla taking 41% of them. The year since has been the hangover. Cox's August data had EV sales down 46.9% year on year, as TeslAnt noted in the US price-premium piece, and the third quarter is the first that looks like a floor rather than a slide: the EV share of new-car sales rose from 5.8% in Q2 to 6.5%.
"The third quarter was the best result in a year, and improvement through 2026 suggests the reset phase is largely behind us," said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox Automotive's director of industry insights, in the firm's commentary. Her other explanation is at the pump: "With gas prices well above $4 a gallon, electric vehicles look better than ever." Counting hybrids and plug-ins, electrified cars were nearly a quarter of US sales in the quarter.
Tesla: down a fifth, still more than half
Tesla's US sales fell 20% year on year, and the company still took "over 50%" of the market, Cox says. The Model Y was 69% of Tesla's quarter and the Model 3 28%; the Cybertruck and the rest account for the remaining 3%. Cox does not publish Tesla's exact count. Working back from its own figures, 41% of 438,487 a year ago and then 20% less, gives roughly 144,000 cars, or about 54% of the quarter's market.
That is a steeper fall than Tesla's global picture. Worldwide, Tesla delivered 486,532 cars in the quarter, 2.1% below a year earlier. By the same arithmetic, Tesla's sales outside the United States rose about 8%, so the American drop was more than offset elsewhere.
The year so far
Over nine months the two Teslas still hold more than half the market between them, and the Model Y is down only 1% on a year that included the tax-credit rush. The Model 3 has fallen by nearly a third.
| Rank | Model | Jan to Sep 2026 | Share | Year on year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tesla Model Y | 262,491 | 36.0% | −1.0% |
| 2 | Tesla Model 3 | 106,962 | 14.7% | −31.1% |
| 3 | Hyundai Ioniq 5 | 31,112 | 4.3% | −24.3% |
| 4 | Toyota bZ | 24,944 | 3.4% | +103.4% |
| 5 | Chevrolet Equinox EV | 18,154 | 2.5% | −65.6% |
| 6 | Rivian R1S | 17,259 | 2.4% | −12.3% |
| 7 | Ford Mustang Mach-E | 17,206 | 2.4% | −59.0% |
| 8 | Rivian EDV | 15,685 | 2.1% | +130.4% |
| 9 | Honda Prologue | 13,289 | 1.8% | −63.6% |
| 10 | Kia EV9 | 12,429 | 1.7% | −0.2% |
Source: Kelley Blue Book estimates via Electrek. The shares imply a nine-month total of about 729,000 EVs.
The growth is where the credit never mattered much. Toyota and Lexus sold five times as many EVs as a year ago, Rivian 46% more and Subaru 31% more. The losers are the brands whose EV business was built around the $7,500: Chevrolet's Equinox EV is down two-thirds for the year, Honda's Prologue likewise, and Ford's quarter, reported by TeslAnt on 4 October, was 6,047 cars, down 80%.
What it means for Europe
Nothing in these numbers crosses the Atlantic directly, but one of them explains Tesla's quarter. A 20% US decline inside a 2.1% global decline means the rest of the world carried the difference, which is why the European registration series TeslAnt has tracked all month, from Portugal to Austria, matters more to Tesla's 2026 than it did to its 2025.