Combustion Cars Lose Ground to EVs and Hybrids

The electric vehicle transition is picking up pace as a growing number of people are buying battery electric vehicles (BEV) or hybrid models. New figures from market research and data analysis company JATO reveals that cars with alternative drive systems (i.e. any car that is not solely powered by a combustion engine) are accounting for an increasingly large share of new passenger car registrations worldwide. Where purely battery-powered electric cars (BEVs) accounted for just 1.9 percent of new car registrations in 2019, that number had risen to 14.5 percent by the first quarter of 2025. This makes BEVs the second most popular option globally.

Other alternative drive types have also gained ground. New passenger car registrations of EREVs (electric cars with combustion engines as range extenders) were up 1.2 percentage points between 2019 and Q1 2025, while MHEV cars (mild hybrids with electric support) rose 8 percentage points. By contrast, the share of passenger cars with combustion engines plummeted from 91.2 percent to 56.7 percent in the past seven years.

Market data from 54 countries was included in the analysis.