Canada’s electric-vehicle market is showing fresh signs of life after a difficult 2025. Statistics Canada’s latest annual count shows 623,481 battery-electric light-duty vehicles registered across the country in 2025, while newer quarterly data show purchases moving higher again in 2026. In the second quarter, Canadians registered 58,811 new zero-emission vehicles, the strongest quarterly result since the final three months of 2024.
The numbers point to a market that is larger than it was only a few years ago but also unusually sensitive to incentives, affordability and model availability. Battery electrics are returning to growth, plug-in hybrids remain an important part of the mix, and conventional hybrids are expanding even faster. At the same time, the recovery is spreading beyond the largest metropolitan areas, giving Canada’s EV market a broader geographic footprint.
Canada’s Battery-Electric Fleet Has Reached a New Scale
Statistics Canada counted 623,481 registered battery-electric light-duty vehicles in 2025, up 27.9% from the previous year. That is a significant expansion from the 487,618 BEVs recorded in 2024 and an even more dramatic change compared with 2017, when fewer than 20,000 battery-electric light-duty vehicles were registered nationally. Canada now has hundreds of thousands of households and businesses operating vehicles that depend entirely on electricity rather than gasoline.
Battery electrics also represent only part of the electrified fleet. Another 251,520 registered light-duty vehicles were plug-in hybrids in 2025, meaning the combined BEV-and-PHEV population reached roughly 875,000. Statistics Canada classifies those two technologies as zero-emission vehicles because they can operate without tailpipe emissions. When conventional hybrids are added, electrified vehicles represented 6.5% of Canada’s 25.3 million registered light-duty vehicles. ZEVs alone represented 3.5%, up from 2.8% one year earlier.
New Registrations Have Finally Broken Out of the 2025 Slump
The clearest sign of renewed momentum arrived in the second quarter of 2026. Canadians registered 58,811 new zero-emission vehicles between April and June, compared with 43,113 during the first quarter and 46,413 during the same period of 2025. It was the highest quarterly ZEV registration total since the fourth quarter of 2024, when 81,216 were registered during a particularly strong period for incentive-driven demand.
ZEVs represented 10.7% of all new motor-vehicle registrations in the second quarter, compared with 8.6% a year earlier. It was also the third consecutive quarter in which more than one in 10 newly registered vehicles qualified as a ZEV. The broader Canadian vehicle market was busy as well: 547,673 new vehicles were registered during the quarter, the highest second-quarter total since 2019. EV growth therefore occurred alongside a broader rebound in vehicle registrations rather than simply reflecting weakness elsewhere in the market.
Battery Electrics Did Most of the Heavy Lifting
Battery-electric vehicles were the largest contributor to the second-quarter ZEV total. Canadians registered 40,585 new BEVs during the quarter, up from 29,808 in the first quarter. Compared with the second quarter of 2025, new BEV registrations increased 37.4%. Roughly seven of every 10 ZEVs registered during the quarter were fully battery-electric, demonstrating that the market’s recovery was not being driven primarily by plug-in hybrids.
Plug-in hybrids nevertheless moved higher as well. Their quarterly registrations increased from 13,305 in the first quarter to 18,226 in the second. On a year-over-year basis, PHEV registrations were up 8.0%. The distinction matters because the two technologies serve different buyers. A BEV relies entirely on charging, while a plug-in hybrid can handle many daily trips electrically while retaining a gasoline engine for longer journeys. Growth in both categories suggests Canadian buyers are returning to electrified vehicles through more than one ownership model.
The Market Is Recovering, Not Returning to the 2024 Peak Yet
The stronger 2026 numbers come after an unusually sharp reversal. New ZEV registrations fell by 34.7% in 2025 compared with 2024, dropping to roughly 178,000 vehicles. Their share of all new registrations fell from 14.6% in 2024 to 9.5% in 2025. Separate sales data tell a similar story: 169,972 ZEVs were sold during 2025, down 35.7% from the previous year.
That context makes the second-quarter rebound meaningful without turning it into an all-time record. The 58,811 ZEVs registered during Q2 2026 were still well below the 81,216 recorded in Q4 2024. More encouragingly, monthly sales figures show momentum continuing beyond June. Canada recorded 18,920 ZEV sales in July 2026, 36.0% more than in July 2025. Through the first seven months of 2026, sales reached 119,694 vehicles compared with 93,381 during the equivalent period a year earlier.
Federal Incentives Returned as Registrations Started Growing Again
Changes to purchase incentives form an important part of the market backdrop. Canada’s previous iZEV consumer program paused on January 12, 2025, after available funding was fully committed, and formally ended that March. Transport Canada says the program supported nearly 560,000 electric-vehicle purchases or leases over six years. Statistics Canada has identified the federal incentive pause, together with changes to provincial programs such as Quebec’s, as likely contributors to weaker ZEV demand during 2025.
The federal Electric Vehicle Affordability Program subsequently brought point-of-sale incentives back for eligible vehicles purchased or leased from February 16, 2026. Battery-electric and fuel-cell vehicles can receive incentives of up to $5,000 in 2026, while qualifying plug-in hybrids can receive up to $2,500. The five-year program received $2.275 billion in funding. The rebound cannot be attributed to incentives alone, but the timing is notable: Q1 2026 produced the first year-over-year increase in ZEV registrations since late 2024.
The Rebound Is Showing Up Across Most of the Country
The national improvement was not confined to one or two major EV markets. Ontario recorded a 46.6% year-over-year increase in new ZEV registrations during the second quarter, while Nova Scotia rose 46.0%. Saskatchewan increased 39.6%, Manitoba 39.2%, British Columbia 31.5%, Prince Edward Island 16.7% and Quebec 12.5%. New Brunswick moved in the opposite direction, with registrations declining 16.6% from a year earlier.
Several smaller markets also established notable records. Saskatchewan reached a provincial high of 416 new ZEV registrations during the quarter, while Manitoba recorded a record 977. Nova Scotia reached 870, tying the record it had set in the fourth quarter of 2024. Statistics Canada currently does not publish separate quarterly estimates for Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador because of limitations in its data-sharing agreements, although both provinces remain included in the national totals. That limitation is important when comparing provincial performance.
EV Growth Is Reaching Well Beyond Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver
Large metropolitan markets still generate much of Canada’s EV volume, but second-quarter data show growth reaching smaller communities. From Q1 to Q2, the Montréal census metropolitan area added 3,089 new ZEV registrations and the Québec CMA added 641. More strikingly, areas of Quebec outside census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations recorded an increase of 1,937 registrations. Sept-Îles rose from 31 to 68, while Baie-Comeau increased from 24 to 57.
Ontario showed a similar, if more urban-focused, pattern. Toronto added 2,344 registrations from the previous quarter, Ottawa added 515 and Hamilton added 251. Peterborough climbed from 68 to 117, while London rose from 395 to 548. British Columbia reported increases in every population centre tracked by Statistics Canada, with new highs reached in several communities. For an EV market historically associated with a handful of major urban centres, that wider geographic growth is an important change in where electrified vehicles are appearing.
Conventional Hybrids Are Growing Even Faster
The EV recovery is only one part of a broader shift toward electrified powertrains. Canada had 772,562 registered conventional hybrid light-duty vehicles in 2025, substantially more than the 623,481 battery electrics on the road. Hybrid registrations grew 31.8% during the year, exceeding the 27.9% growth recorded by BEVs. Plug-in hybrids increased 27.3%. Unlike BEVs and PHEVs, conventional hybrids are not included in Statistics Canada’s ZEV category because they rely on gasoline and cannot be externally charged.
That strength continued into 2026. Canadians registered 91,868 new conventional hybrids in the second quarter alone, up 39.5% from a year earlier. That volume was considerably larger than either the 40,585 new battery electrics or 18,226 plug-in hybrids registered during the same quarter. The figures highlight an increasingly diverse market in which many households are reducing gasoline consumption without making an immediate transition to a vehicle that depends entirely on charging infrastructure.
More Than Half of New ZEVs Were Assembled in Asia
The source of Canada’s EV supply is also changing. Of the zero-emission vehicles newly registered during the second quarter of 2026, 54.6% were assembled in Asia. North America accounted for 27.3% and Europe for 18.1%. In raw numbers, Statistics Canada recorded 32,084 Asia-assembled ZEV registrations during the quarter, compared with 16,067 from North America and 10,660 from Europe.
The composition of the broader fleet looks somewhat different because it reflects vehicles accumulated over many years and includes conventional hybrids. Among registered light-duty EVs in 2025, the United States was the largest assembly country with a 35.6% share, followed by Japan at 20.8% and Canada at 14.9%. China represented 3.6%. These figures illustrate how quickly quarterly buying patterns can differ from the existing fleet. For automakers and dealers, product availability, assembly location and trade conditions increasingly influence which electrified vehicles reach Canadian showrooms.
A Bigger Fleet Is Putting More Attention on Canada’s Charging Network
A growing battery-electric fleet increases the importance of reliable charging at homes, workplaces and along highways. Transport Canada counted 39,220 public EV chargers nationwide by March 2026, up from 38,364 at the end of 2025 and 32,298 in 2024. The March total included 30,741 Level 2 chargers and 8,479 Level 3 fast chargers. Federal programs are also supporting thousands of additional installations, including projects announced in 2026 for public, workplace and other charging locations.
The registration recovery suggests Canada has moved beyond the steep decline that defined much of 2025, but one or two strong quarters do not guarantee uninterrupted growth. Affordability, charging access, incentives, vehicle supply and consumer preferences continue to move at the same time. What has clearly changed is the scale of the market: more than 623,000 battery-electric light-duty vehicles were already registered by 2025, while ZEV sales through July 2026 were running well ahead of the comparable 2025 period. Electric vehicles are no longer a small experiment in Canada’s auto market.
