Colombia’s electric vehicle sales surpassed 5,083 units in March 2026 alone, doubling February’s figures and closing Q1 2026 with 9,349 total sales, a 171% increase over the same period of 2025; on April 5, President Gustavo Petro cited those numbers in a public statement crediting Decreto 1432 de 2025, the December tariff increase on imported gasoline vehicles, as the principal driver of the surge.
The acceleration builds on a trend already confirmed before the tariff took effect: in 2025, Colombia registered 19,724 fully electric vehicles, a 115% increase over 2024, reaching third place in Latin America behind Brazil and Mexico, with electrified models including hybrids accounting for 34.5% of all new car sales during the year, according to ANDI and Fenalco data compiled in February 2026.
A tariff shift that made gasoline cars more expensive
Decreto 1432 de 2025, issued December 24, 2025, by the Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo, raised import tariffs on gasoline and diesel cars from 35% to 40% and on gasoline motorcycles from 30% to 35%, while electric vehicles continued to enter the country duty-free, widening the price gap between the two technologies at the point of purchase and redirecting demand toward clean mobility.
President Petro posted on April 5 that the result represented “almost a miracle,” adding that decarbonizing mobility would reduce air pollution deaths among children and older people. The decree itself cited studies indicating that “fossil fuel particles are the contaminant that most frequently exceeds air quality standards” and that diesel vehicles “emit particles with carcinogenic effects on people,” connecting the tariff measure to a broader public health argument.
However, BBVA Research’s 2025 Colombia Automotive Situation report noted that EV growth also reflects lower interest rates, a favorable exchange rate for vehicle imports, growing household income, and rising remittances, all factors operating independently of tariff policy.
Este es el verdadero cambio en función de la vida, gracias a nuestra política arancelaria sobre vehículos a gasolina, encareciéndoloa, en solo un mes duplicamos la venta de carros eléctricos.
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) April 5, 2026
Es.casi un milagro y vamos full y aceledaramente hacia descarbonizar la movilidad en… pic.twitter.com/kf2vEjrk6g
The infrastructure gap that clean mobility must cross
According to ACIS and ANDEMOS, the Asociación Nacional de Movilidad Sostenible, the main barriers to mass EV adoption include high charging station installation costs, a lack of interoperability between competing charging networks, geographic concentration of stations in Bogotá and Medellín, and the near-total absence of intercity charging corridors for travel between cities such as Cali, Barranquilla, and Bucaramanga.
Colombia addressed part of the energy supply equation on March 19, 2026, when the Ministerio de Minas y Energía issued Resolución 40159 de 2026, regulating the Colombia Solar program, which allows households in strata 1, 2, and 3, the three lowest socioeconomic tiers, to install solar panels for self-generation and reduce dependence on subsidized grid electricity, creating conditions that also lower long-term home charging costs for electric vehicle owners.
Vicente Lanza, CEO and co-founder of Ergenia, a Colombian startup developing smart charging infrastructure, argued in September 2025 that “Colombia needs a comprehensive ecosystem combining smart infrastructure, incentives, and multisectoral collaboration” to cross from initial adoption into mass rollout, a threshold that the 171% Q1 growth makes more urgent while the charging network’s geographic concentration keeps it structurally out of reach for millions of Colombians outside the two main cities.
Domestic production: Clean mobility’s unresolved challenge
President Petro acknowledged in his April 5 statement that domestic EV production remains a central unresolved challenge, noting the need to supply both the national market and the broader Latin American region from Colombian factories.
Colombia currently imports virtually all the units it sells, meaning the industry’s clean mobility gains rest entirely on foreign manufacturers while domestic production capacity stays at zero.
The truth is, Colombia’s Q1 2026 figures confirm that tariff policy can redirect buying decisions fast, but the longer test is whether clean mobility reaches Bucaramanga, Cali, and Cartagena with the same charging access that early adopters find in Bogotá, and whether the country transitions from importing electric cars to producing them before future trade agreements compress the price advantage that Decreto 1432 created in December 2025.