After the December peak in the electric car market, January statistics look like a sharp collapse. Formally, imports have indeed fallen 14 times, and this easily leads to loud conclusions about the “end of the era of electric cars.” However, the figures for January 2026 show otherwise: demand has not disappeared, but has been redistributed — between imports, new car sales, and domestic resales.
According to the results of January, 1,450 first registrations of used electric cars were recorded. 904 electric cars were registered separately as new. In total, this is about 2,300 electric cars registered during the month. At the same time, 3,550 cars were re-registered on the domestic market.
The contrast with December is maximum: then 33 thousand electric cars were registered. In January 2025, the picture was different: 3 thousand used electric cars were imported, 672 new ones were registered, and 1,700 were domestic resales.
The main factor is that demand has been “shifted” to December.
January came after a large but predictable surge in December, before the VAT exemption ended. In such situations, the market reacts in a standard way: buyers try to catch the last train, and sales that could have stretched out over several months are concentrated in one.
It is also important that registrations do not equal actual imports within a month. Some of the January registrations could be the result of December deals that were not physically closed on time due to logistical delays, queues, or overloading of service centers. There were isolated cases when the deal was executed in December, and the registration took place in January — while the tax consequences remained "December".
As a result, January does not reflect a "zeroing out of demand", but the result of a sharp shift in the volume of purchases in one month.
The domestic market maintained its volume, while fluctuations were concentrated in imports and new cars.
The key signal from the January data is that the domestic segment has not “failed”: the number of resales is staying at about the same level. This means that the electric vehicle market already has its own domestic circulation and is able to partially compensate for fluctuations in imports.
Instead, the biggest swings occurred in the import of used electric vehicles and in the new segment. This creates a "catastrophe" effect in the headlines, although the overall logic of the market is different: demand continues to be realized, but largely domestically.
Separately, it is worth considering the factor of oversaturation of supply after December. Until the peak month, the market was conditionally kept at the level of about 5 thousand electric cars sold per month. In December, 32 thousand arrived, in November — about 10 thousand more. With such a configuration, the “queue for sale” is sharply lengthened: selling becomes more difficult, the exposure time increases, and some sellers are forced to lower the price due to the costs of the site or the need to return the money faster. For the buyer, on the contrary, this creates opportunities — a wider choice and a stronger position for bargaining.
January was exacerbated by external factors: frost, outages, charging costs
In January, several negative factors simultaneously affected the market, which are difficult to predict, but they significantly affect buyer behavior.
The first is abnormally low temperatures down to minus 20 and below. In frost, electric cars show a noticeable drop in range, which is especially critical for budget models without battery thermal management. For example: a car with a “summer” range of 130-140 km in such conditions can show about 70 km, and with the heating turned on, it can drop to 30 km. Even models with well-thought-out thermal management do not avoid losses, because energy still goes to heating the interior with a large temperature difference.
The second is the instability of the power supply and restrictions on the operation of public electric charging stations. When there is no possibility to charge at home and at the same time public infrastructure is partially unavailable, the range becomes a more severe limitation than in "normal" periods.
The third is the price of charging. For charging at home, the guideline is “up to 100 UAH per 100 km” (in the absence of extreme frosts). At paid stations, tariffs of 30-32 UAH per kWh are mentioned, which in calculation gives about 600 UAH per 100 km. Under such conditions, the argument of “savings” disappears for those who do not have stable home charging.
These three factors together worsen the conditions for selling electric vehicles in winter, reinforcing the effect of the "post-peak pause".
New electric cars: dependence on unofficial imports and Chinaʼs 180-day restriction
The segment of new electric vehicles also decreased compared to December. An additional factor was the change in rules on the Chinese route, through which a significant part of new electric vehicles entered Ukraine through independent importers.
The announced restriction boils down to a simple formula: a new car cannot be exported for export earlier than 180 days after its first registration. In practice, this means either waiting for half a year with “frozen” money, or switching to used cars, which no longer have the same price argument of “novelty”. Against this background, the segment of new electric cars is potentially shifting towards official dealer deliveries — with a higher price and different positioning.
At the same time, the mere presence of barriers does not guarantee that the market will not try to adapt to them, especially given previous examples of non-standard schemes in international trade in electric vehicles.
What this means for business: a focus on internal turnover and comprehensive service
The January situation highlighted the weakness of business models that rely solely on imports. Imports are sensitive to currency exchange rates, external prices, logistics, regulatory decisions, and seasonal fluctuations. When one of these factors changes dramatically, the “thin” intermediary format begins to falter.
Instead, the domestic market provides a different type of stability: the car is already physically in the country, it can be checked, inspected, and sold “today for today.” In such a structure, the role of trade-in, buyback, and resale, as well as the service component, which removes some of the risks and time from the buyer, logically increases.
At the same time, customer expectations are changing. For some buyers, not "mechanical" characteristics are becoming more important, but infotainment, updates, ecosystem and predictability of use. In this logic, the dealerʼs competitive advantage is not an attempt to earn "multiple times" on one client, but a transparent condition of the car, normal diagnostics, documentation and real obligations — including a warranty stipulated in the contract for 3-6 months.
Conclusion
January 2026 showed a sharp drop in electric vehicle imports against the background of the December peak, but did not give reason to talk about the disappearance of the segment. Demand remained, but the sales channel changed: a significantly larger part of the transactions took place within the country, while imports and sales of new cars became the main sources of volatility.
After the peak, the market entered a phase of normalization, which was further strengthened by frosts, unstable power supply and high cost of public charging. For sellers, this means a longer sales cycle, for buyers — a wider choice and more room for bargaining. For businesses — a signal to focus not only on imports, but on working with internal circulation and a comprehensive service that meets new customer expectations.
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