Europe, the world’s second largest market for electric vehicles after China, appears to be closed for business to Elon Musk’s Tesla.
Whether it’s France or Sweden, the Netherlands or Switzerland, registrations of new Tesla vehicles—which lag retail sales slightly—continued to plummet at high double-digit rates. Now their sales numbers are dwindling so much they risk becoming meaningless compared to the United States or China.
The midsize crossover has been the best-selling car of any kind worldwide for two years straight and accounts for about two-thirds of the brand’s volume, so any changeover was bound to distort monthly sales figures.
All these markets are relatively wealthy, have a sizeable EV public charging network and enjoy a penetration rate for EVs far higher than Spain, Italy or most of Eastern Europe. In other words, they tend to be where conditions for Tesla are most favorable.
To put that into perspective, the grand total 19,771 new Tesla vehicles registered across all five markets for the first four months of this year is roughly the equivalent of two weeks of sales in China.
It’s important to note these figures could still be affected by a slow production ramp and limited availability of the Model Y Juniper. Moreover, a number of car markets have yet to publish their figures. Chief among them are Germany and the UK, respectively the largest and second-largest in Europe.
