Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars

For the first time since the dawn of the automobile, the majority of new cars are not powered exclusively by gasoline: So far in 2026, electric vehicles and hybrids are outselling traditional gas-powered cars.

As oil prices have gone up and up since the start of the war in Iran, drivers from Hanoi to Hamburg are picking up EVs like never before.

According to the energy think tank Ember, 49 countries have broken EV-sales records this year.

The prime minister of Thailand recently ditched his Rolls-Royce and commuted to work in an all-electric BYD Sealion.

And then there’s the United States.

For all the angst over high gas prices, EVs accounted for just 6.4 percent of new-car sales in the U.S. from July to September.

That’s a slight rise from January, before the beginning of the war with Iran—but just barely.

The U.S. has long been something of an EV laggard, full of drivers ( and a president ) who are skeptical of battery-powered cars.

But even as gas prices have jumped from $3 to $4.50 over the past year, drivers won’t budge.

America’s car fleet was never going to flip overnight.

No one forks over $50,000 for a Tesla the moment gas hits $5 a gallon.

“If gas prices are higher for a little while,” Elaine Buckberg, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and a former executive at General Motors, told me.

“People say, ‘Oh, this is going to pass.

I’m not going to go and change what vehicle I own.’” But when high gas prices linger for half a year or longer, Buckberg added, the direction of the car industry can shift.