Electric vehicles have surged to 51.7 per cent of new car sales in Turkiye in the first seven months of 2026, driven by the Hormuz crisis pushing fuel prices higher.

EVs including hybrids have gone from just 1 per cent of new car sales in 2022 to 22 per cent in 2025, and now past the halfway mark in 2026. Domestic maker Togg leads the market alongside Chinese EV brands.

A 2023 tax relief for electric cars lowered registration costs, and the launch of Turkiye's first domestic electric car maker coincided with the takeoff.

The speed of the shift mirrors earlier patterns in the 2020s: electric technology can move from near-zero to majority default within a few years when prices and policy align.

The shift has regional parallels. In Germany, EVs plus plug-in hybrids hit nearly 39 per cent of new car sales in August 2026, and Volkswagen sold more EVs than fossil fuel cars for the first time, according to industry data.

Analysts say the 2020s pattern is clear: once purchase prices approach parity and fuel stays expensive, adoption curves bend sharply upward. Turkiye's tax relief in 2023 provided the policy push; the Hormuz crisis supplied the economic one.