According to research from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, drivers around the world bought 2.09 million electric vehicles in October 2026 – that combines both pure battery-electric cars and plug-in hybrids. It is a slight 3% dip compared to September, but it is an 8% increase over October last year and brings the global total for the first ten months of 2026 to 17.5 million units – up 5% year-on-year. But what makes this report genuinely interesting is how wildly uneven the numbers look depending on which continent you call home.
Europe is doing most of the heavy lifting for Western electrification, delivering a 36% year-on-year sales jump in October to reach 510,000 units and pushing its ten-month total to 4.5 million vehicles.
