Electric vehicles in Turkey save $286 million a year in fuel imports

The electric vehicle fleet in Turkey is saving about $286 million a year on fuel imports, according to an analysis by the energy research group Ember. As of August 2026, there are 509,000 electric vehicles on the road, including 444,000 fully electric cars and 65,100 plug-in hybrids.

How much oil do EVs save?

Based on Ember's calculations, the current fleet avoids about 8,000 barrels of oil consumption a day. Of that, 7,470 barrels come from fully electric vehicles. Assuming a Brent crude price of $100 a barrel, daily savings reach $784,000 and monthly savings $23.5 million. On an annual basis, avoided consumption comes to about 2.87 million barrels.

Turkey consumed roughly 250.2 million barrels of gasoline and diesel last year. The current 509,000 vehicles replace 1.15% of that consumption.

Scenarios for 1 and 10 million vehicles

The analysis also includes two more ambitious scenarios. When the fleet reaches 1 million vehicles, annual avoided consumption rises to 5.64 million barrels, annual savings to $564 million, and the share of total consumption to 2.25%. For a fleet of 10 million vehicles, the 2040 target, avoided consumption would be 56.38 million barrels a year, savings $5.64 billion, and the share of total consumption 22.53%.

Grid impact and market share

The electricity demand created by EVs was also taken into account. The annual electricity needs of the 509,000-vehicle fleet are about 1.25 TWh. In the first eight months of 2026, Turkey produced a total of 248.43 TWh of electricity, 149 TWh of it from renewable sources. EV demand is a small share of that output.

Plug-in models accounted for 18.7% of new cars registered in Turkey. Fully electric cars had a 16.9% sales share, placing Turkey 28th in the world and ahead of Australia. Among the countries cited, the United Kingdom stood at 25.8%, Germany at 24.7%, France at 29.4% and leader China at 38.1%, all ahead of Turkey.