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The wealthiest country in the region, Chile is known for being ahead of the curve in adopting most new technologies in Latin America. In particular, this is visible in the country having the highest per-capita deployment of solar in the region by quite a margin. Unsurprisingly, Chile was also the first country to enact legislation to promote EVs and also to deploy public funds to build a comprehensive network, which today remains one of the most complete in Latin America. Chile was also a pioneer in electric buses, becoming the country with the second largest fleet in the world (only behind China).
Yet the country lagged in the passenger EV segment, closing 2025 at a mere 3.3% market share (2.3% BEV) and then seeing a slight increase to 4.72% (2.6% BEV) by the first quarter of 2026, a bit underwhelming when some countries were rising past above 10% or 15%, and in the case of Uruguay, 30%! This is why we haven’t had a report on Chilean EV sales since *checks notes* May 2024, when the market was getting close to 2%, tripling its share from the year prior. After that, I didn’t think it was worth it to write an article reporting on “share went from 2% to 3%,” so I focused on other countries.
