By Bosphorus News Life Desk
Türkiye's electric car fleet reached 472,157 vehicles at the end of August, rising 53.2% from a year earlier as battery-powered models took a larger share of new registrations.
The country had 18,037,907 registered passenger cars at the end of August, putting fully electric models at 2.62% of the existing fleet, according to Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) data. The number of electric cars stood at 308,217 in August 2025.
New registrations are changing much faster than the vehicle fleet as a whole. Of the 600,859 passenger cars registered in Türkiye between January and August, 18.1% were electric and 32.1% were hybrid. Petrol cars accounted for 40.8%, while diesel had fallen to 7.8%.
Electric cars accounted for 18.1% of registrations in Türkiye through August, compared with a 20.7% battery-electric share in the European Union in the first half of 2026. The European Automobile Manufacturers' Association recorded 1,220,890 new battery-electric registrations across the bloc during the period.
The EU had 7.59 million battery-only electric passenger cars on the road at the end of 2025, according to Eurostat, an increase of 31.5% in one year. Some 1.89 million new battery-electric cars were registered across the bloc during 2025.
The US market has moved differently this year. Battery-electric vehicles accounted for 6% of new light-duty vehicle sales in the second quarter, down from 7% a year earlier, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Hybrid vehicles increased their share to a record 16%.
US Department of Energy data put the country's registered battery-electric light-duty vehicle fleet at about 5.69 million at the end of 2025. The US data cover light-duty vehicles rather than the passenger-car category used in Türkiye and the EU, so the fleet totals are not directly comparable.
Electric cars still make up only 2.62% of Türkiye's passenger-car fleet. Among cars registered in the first eight months of 2026, however, the share had reached 18.1%, or roughly one in five.
Sources: Turkish Statistical Institute, Eurostat, European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, US Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy Alternative Fuels Data Center, Bosphorus News review and reporting.