America’s Hot Hybrid Summer

In Europe, the rise in gas prices due to the Iran war has car buyers thinking about electrics more than ever before.

Battery-electric vehicle (BEV) sales were up more than 33 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the same time last year, according to data published by European consultancies and nongovernmental organizations this month.

The same has not happened in the US. Electric sales are up by nearly 15 percent in the second quarter of the year compared to the first. But the overall number of EVs sold is still small. They're lagging well behind the optimistic projections made before the Trump administration reversed federal support for the tech, which included generous tax credits of up to $7,500, and before automakers responded by dialing back their own electric plans.

Instead, the more noticeable sales boom has been in cars that use traditional fuel, but more efficiently: hybrids. Sales of cars that sip gas rather than glug are projected to rise 9 percent this year, according to Kelley Blue Book, while sales of cars overall are slated to dip by more than 2 percent.

Fuel Efficient

The price of oil has fluctuated following the continuing conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, and so have gas prices, which are now up 30 percent in the US compared to this time last year. That alone has Americans thinking about alternatives to the traditional gas-powered car. Hybrids are more fuel-efficient because they combine internal combustion engines with electric motors. Some plug in and use smaller gas tanks to move once their electric charge has run out; most don't, depending on technology that’s decades older.

But gas prices aren’t totally responsible for the US’s hot hybrid summer, analysts say. Hybrids are more available than they used to be. They are, on average, more expensive than gas-powered cars, but not by much. And they don’t give Americans range anxiety in the way that pure battery-powered cars do.

Now the vehicles—once viewed as a bridge between gas and electric—will likely stick around for the long haul. “A hybrid doesn't feel like an electric vehicle—these are very different animals,” says Stephanie Brinley, the associate director of AutoIntelligence at Mobility Global.

“People are looking to save; they have range anxiety. The hybrid is the perfect solution," says Karl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars.com. “Hybrids still have a long life ahead of them.”

Unlike electrics, which tend to confuse Americans right now, hybrids aren’t as alien. More buyers thinking about hybrids isn’t necessarily bad for EV adoption, Brinley argues. “When buyers say, ‘I’ll look at this hybrid,’ that’s opening up a willingness to consider something that’s not traditional. It’s a little crack in the armor that can make a difference when they come back to the market,” she says.

The American fondness for hybrids is another way US cars are looking really different from their global counterparts.

Toyotathon

This year’s jump in US hybrid sales has a lot to do with one automaker: Toyota. The Japanese automaker made its initial bets in hybrid tech back in the late 1990s, with the birth of the Prius. By the early 2000s, its hybrid system had made its way into other mass-market cars, like the Camry. And then, critically, Toyota stuck with hybrids as other automakers went all-in on electrics in the 2010s and early 2020s. Now, US customers can buy a hybrid version of nearly every car in its lineup. What’s more, many of the automaker’s most popular vehicles, including the Camry and the RAV4, are now hybrid-only.

So maybe it’s unsurprising: This quarter, Toyota reported its hybrid sales were up by nearly 20 percent.

“You have people who have been buying RAV4s for 20 years, and they literally don’t know what a hybrid is, but they go into a dealership and buy a new one,” Brauer says.

It helps hybrids that, even for vehicles with pure gas-powered alternatives, the mixed powertrain now adds only a few thousand dollars or so to the sticker price. For those who can afford today’s eye-watering car prices, that’s not much. Honda, another automaker with recent success in hybrid models, reported last month that its popular CR-V SUV with hybrid trims accounted for 51 percent of model sales. Honda said last week that it would discontinue its Prologue EV in the US for the 2027 model year, leaving it with zero BEVs in its North American lineup. Hybrid sales from Hyundai and Kia were also up this quarter.

Even US automakers, which devoted much of the last half-decade to a pivot to electrics, are talking bigger games about hybrids. Ford’s smaller Maverick truck has seen serious success with its hybrid trim, and it offers a handful of other hybrids. Stellantis has backed away from plug-in hybrids, but it has publicly floated the possibility of more electrified powertrains. Even GM, long a hybrid holdout, now says it will lean on the tech to help it get through the messy middle of the electric transition.

Edmunds reported this month that even Tesla owners are getting in on the hybrid act. More than 20 percent of those trading in the electric cars in the second quarter of this year purchased hybrids. (The figure doesn't account for direct-to-consumer brands like Rivian, Lucid, and of course, Tesla.)

Oddly, the slow-moving success of hybrid technology has Brinley optimistic about the future of EVs. “Hybrids showed up more than 25 years ago, and now they’re reaching 15 percent of the market,” she says. “We expect EVs to be 12 percent of sales in 2030, and that’s a growth pace that’s even faster than hybrids. It takes a long time for people to change.”