Americans bought roughly 463,000 new electric vehicles in the first half of 2026, according to Kelley Blue Book, and half of them wore a Tesla badge. The company’s 50.5% share is down from the years when it was the only EV most buyers could name, but the shape of the chart underneath it has not loosened much.
Best-selling electric vehicles in the United States, first half of 2026. Kelley Blue Book sales estimates, not registrations.
The Tesla Model Y took 163,454 of those sales, up 8.8% year on year. That single model outsold everything in second through ninth place added together: the eight cars from the Model 3 down to the Lexus RZ total 160,678 between them. Second place is 41% of first. Third place, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 on 20,730, is 13%.
The market may be stabilizing after the sharp correction.
Cox Automotive, Q2 2026 EV sales report
Two of the three risers in the top 10 came from the same group. Toyota’s bZ, the renamed and re-engineered version of the bZ4X, sold 17,553 cars for a gain of 89.8%, and the Lexus RZ added 106.8% to reach 9th on 7,814. Both had a small 2025 base to grow from, but they were the only nameplates in the list to grow by more than single digits. The Ioniq 5 was up 8.6% and the Rivian R1S up 1.5%.
The declines were steeper and more widespread. The Honda Prologue fell 48.5%, the Ford Mustang Mach-E 46.6%, and the Chevrolet Equinox EV 41.4% after a 2025 in which it was the highest-selling non-Tesla EV in the country. The Model 3 dropped 34.3%, which is why Tesla’s overall total moved less than the Model Y’s growth suggests. The Cadillac Lyriq was down 18.7%.
The half-year total sits inside a market that shrank rather than grew. Cox Automotive counted 247,226 EVs in the second quarter, about 5.8% of all new vehicles sold in the United States and 20.5% below the same quarter of 2025, the third consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline. Quarter on quarter the picture was better: Q2 was 14.7% ahead of Q1.
These are estimates rather than registrations, and Kelley Blue Book notes that not every automaker reports US sales figures, so the tail of the list carries more uncertainty than the top. What the numbers do settle is where the volume is: one model, one brand, and a long way down to everyone else.
Source: Kelley Blue Book and Cox Automotive estimates, via Electrek
