5 car trends to look out for in 2026

As 2025 comes to a close and we round into the new year, there’s plenty to take stock of and also many questions we have about what’s to come. 

Here are the five things that we’re going to be keeping a keen eye on as we move into a new year: 

Will EV adoption continue to grow? 

Based on LTA statistics available until November 2025, EVs accounted for 44.5 per cent of new car registrations. 

That’s up from 33.6 per cent in 2024, and 18 per cent in 2023. It’s a smaller year-on-year increase compared with 2024, but it’s still a number that’s notable — almost one in two cars sold in 2025 was all-electric. 

With the impending changes to EEAI and VES, the tax incentives for buying an EV will shrink. That might dampen some of the EV-buying enthusiasm. 

On the flip side, the product offerings from brands will likely only continue to grow. With rapidly developing EV technology (especially on the manufacturing front), there’s some optimism that cost might go down. 

Charging infrastructure continues to improve each year. And of course, a lot of it also boils down to customer sentiment — and it increasingly feels like there’s more acceptance towards EVs (helps that the products have improved leaps and bounds).

Will Chinese brands continue to make inroads? 

Through 11 months, Chinese brands registered 13,319 new cars in Singapore (we’re only counting China-born brands; Chinese-owned brands like MG, Lotus, Volvo have not been included). That accounts for 28.8 per cent of all cars sold. That’s up from 16.8 per cent in 2024. 

There’s plenty to explain this uptick: On top of there being more brands and models available to customers, there’s likely also increasing acceptance of Chinese brands (BYD’s surging presence plays no small part in this, certainly). 

With more brands and models to come, and with these brands showing no slowing down in terms of product and price competitiveness, there’s every chance this number grows further in 2026.

Will SUVs continue to dominate? 

Since 2019, when SUVs overtook sedans to become the most popular body style among new car buyers, that SUV dominance has only grown year-on-year. Through 11 months, SUVs make up 54.7 per cent of new cars registered.

Given the unyielding upward trendline, it seems likely that SUVs will continue to dominate our roads in the coming year.

Will the private-hire population continue to grow? 

The population of cars classified by LTA as ‘Private Hire Cars’ has grown year-on-year since 2014. As of November 2025, at 94,711 the population is at its largest yet. 

That said, that growth has tapered off slightly in 2025 (certainly the high COE premiums have something to do with it). Given the dissension (and even ensuing Parliamentary questions) with regards to the private-hire sectors impact on COE premiums due to competing with privately-owned cars, this is a trend everyone’s likely going to keep an eye on.

Will COE go down? 

The age old question, with the age old answer — who in the world knows?? 

The hope is that COE premiums will ease slightly as a result of increased COE supply. 2026 and 2027 are expected to be peak supply years (2016 and 2017 saw a notably higher numbers of cars being registered, which would potentially mean a higher number of cars deregistered and hence COEs cycling back into circulation). 

However, the cut-and-fill approach that LTA has been using since late-2023 effectively takes from this expected increased supply, which means that the actual supply level would be lower. 

Our best estimation is that COE premiums could come down slightly (perhaps towards the later part of the year and into 2027), but definitely don’t expect it to come down to the 40-50k range that we saw in 2016. Those days are probably over — this high-five figure COE landscape might just be the new normal now.

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This article was first published in sgCarMart.