By Issues & Insights Editorial Board | May 21, 2026
You’d think that the Iran war would have been good news for EV sales, given the boost in gasoline prices and general uncertainty it sparked. Instead, it might someday mark the beginning of the end of the left’s EV dreams.
New EV sales in April – the second full month of the war – were down 6.2% compared with March, and down a whopping 23% from the year before, according to Cox Automotive.
True, overall car sales were down last month, but just by 5.4% year over year, and 1.9% from March.
In other words, people were increasingly turning to gasoline-powered cars when they bought in April. And that’s even though searches for EV cars were up.
More people are searching for EVs, and fewer are buying them. That’s not exactly something you’d want to put in a promotional campaign.
And check out this chart from S&P Global.
It shows that EVs’ market share was heavily dependent on federal taxpayer subsidies, which have been down ever since they were canceled at the end of September. (The spike before that was the result of buyers trying to beat the end of this EV welfare program.)
But here’s the really juicy tidbit. The New Car Dealers Association reports that registrations of new EVs in California in the first quarter of this year were 40% below Q1 2025. This is the state that has done the most to force people into electric cars, including having gasoline prices that are currently above $6 a gallon.
As Auto Guide notes, “Rising fuel prices are once again reshaping the American car market, but not in quite the way many expected. Instead of triggering a rush toward fully electric vehicles, the recent spike at the pump appears to be driving more buyers toward hybrids.”
This is as it should be. Consumers worried about gas prices have options. One of them is a hybrid, which has an internal combustion engine but can run on batteries for a time, extending the car’s fuel economy and range, sometimes significantly, without forcing drivers to sit around for half an hour at a charging station.
There’s nothing wrong with this, unless you are an environmental extremist. To them, hybrids are a terrible choice because, as NPR once explained, “they are at best a detour, and at worst an obstruction, in the fight against climate change.”
Got that? Hybrids aren’t a choice. They’re an obstruction. Leftists always end up as totalitarians.
Consumers have given their answer about EVs. Absent some technological miracle, or gas prices perpetually in the double digits, or Gavin Newsom becoming president, EVs will never be anything more than a niche product.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
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