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Tesla sales plummeted in Europe in January, suggesting waning demand for the US carmaker’s vehicles after its billionaire chief Elon Musk stepped up his high-profile interventions in the region’s politics.
The electric-vehicle maker sold just 9,900 units in Europe last month, a decline of more than 45 per cent from the same period in 2024, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Its overall share of new car registrations fell to 1 per cent from 1.8 per cent over the same period.
Tesla’s shrinking market share comes after Musk’s unprecedented foray into EU politics, where he backed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of the country’s elections on Sunday, sparking a backlash on the continent. Musk has also railed against the EU, which he described in November as “undemocratic”.
Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the AfD, said on Monday that Musk had personally congratulated her as the party doubled its vote to its highest ever share of about 21 per cent.
Automotive analysts have said that another factor behind Tesla’s sales drop could be that consumers were waiting for the upgraded Y model, scheduled for the first half of 2025.
Matthias Schmidt, a car analyst, said Tesla sales also faced a tough comparison with those in January last year, when numbers were boosted by a revamp of the carmaker’s Model 3.
He added that: “There’s no getting past the fact though that the January numbers are incredibly disappointing and could start to suggest a migration away from the brand to alternatives to Tesla.”
The fall came even as European consumers purchased 166,000 battery EVs for the month, up 37 per cent from a year ago. Pure EV sales grew faster than those of all other types of vehicles, while sales of cars with petrol and diesel engines fell 20.5 per cent and 26.5 per cent, respectively.
The figures include the EU, UK and other markets including Norway, one of Europe’s biggest markets for EVs.
European sales by SAIC Motor, the Chinese state-backed carmaker that has expanded into the EU and partnered with Audi in China, rose 37 per cent to 23,000 vehicles in January, among the largest year-on-year increases in sales of any large manufacturer in the region.
Overall new vehicle registrations on the continent fell 2.1 per cent in January to 995,271.
