Juan Cole Informed Comment
Iran is suspected of sinking two container ships in the Gulf on Tuesday. Iran has attacked many ships in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, but it had previously sunk only one. The continued instability of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — along with the heated-up wars between Saudi Arabia and Yemen and between Ukraine and Russia — has sent petroleum prices higher this week.
Given the high petroleum prices provoked by the Netanyahu-Trump war of aggression on Iran, many countries have turned instead to electric vehicles. EVs have saved $20 billion in fuel costs since Israel and the US launched their unprovoked war on February 28. So says the Ember energy consultancy. Some countries have, of course, saved more than others. China, the global leader in electric vehicle production and sales, saved $14 billion March-August 2026. The 27 countries of the European Union saved $3.1 billion.
Trump’s America lost out on those savings because his One Big Ugly-Ass budget bill of summer 2025 gutted the green energy investments originally in Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. If you slash the Inflation Reduction Act you get . . . price inflation.
Fifteen other countries, including Brazil and India, outstripped the US in sales share for battery-electric vehicles this year. India’s nominal GDP per capita is $2,813. That of the US is $94,430. But India is more advanced than we are on EVs, because Trump is in the back pocket of Big Oil.
If you don’t count the outliers of China and the US, battery-electric vehicle sales are up 48% in the 59 countries surveyed by Ember in March-August of this year. That is an incredible advance.
Over a larger time span of the first 8 months of this year, and counting in the US and China, BEV sales are up 11% year over year, while both hybrid and gasoline car sales have fallen.
Throughout the world, battery-electric vehicles formed 18% of new car sales in 2026. Just last year, that figure was only 16%.
Some countries have enacted policies to promote EV growth, given the negative impact on their economies of the spike in petroleum prices. In South Korea, EV sales are up a whopping 74.8% in the first nine months of this year.
Gasoline cars are now less than a third of new vehicles sold in South Korea, with sales off 19% compared to the previous year. Nearly three fourths of S. Koreans say they will sell their current gasoline cars if fuel prices go much higher.
Photo of Vietnam’s VinFast by Thai Nguyen on Unsplash
France has seen a big increase in EV sales, with 60% of Renaults sold now being electric.
Vietnam likewise is going electric for its car sales, with its domestic VinFast EV alone capturing about 42% of the country’s car market.
Overall, EVs were 51% of new car sales in Vietnam by the end of August, Ember says.
The US fought a long war in Vietnam on the pretext that capitalism would spur progress in the country while Communism would make it backward. How ironic that Vietnam is now running circles around the hidebound, oil-polluted, hyper-capitalist US in greening its transportation industry.
And Norway, where EVs were already 95% of new car sales? That’s 98% now.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
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