Early car sales data for January is starting to arrive from countries across the pond, and they paint an alarming picture for Tesla. Sales are crashing in France, Germany, and the UK—all affluent countries that are key markets for Tesla’s electric vehicles. Coming on the heels of a large financial miss, it’s just one more problem for the automaker.
Tesla sales dropped around 13 percent across Europe in 2024, but so far this year, the scale of the problem is far greater. In France, sales of new Teslas fell by 63 percent, while total car sales in the country fell by just 6 percent, with EV sales dropping just half a percent.
Germany was already looking like lost ground for Tesla—its 41 percent drop in 2024 accounted for most of Tesla’s lost sales across Europe. That must make the 59 percent drop in German Tesla sales recorded during January even more painful on the profit and loss statements.
Across the Channel, the British auto industry just released its sales data for January. Here, Tesla sales fell less precipitously—just 12 percent. However, battery EV sales were 35 percent higher in the UK in January 2025 than in January 2024. The cake is growing, but Tesla is getting to eat less and less of it.
In fact, no Tesla cracked the UK’s top 10 best-seller list last month, something that has regularly happened in the past, although that may be due to having just two models for >sale in most markets.
Large declines have also been recorded in Sweden (44 percent), Norway (38 percent), and the Netherlands (42 percent).
This sparks joy.
Well for obvious reasons. But also bcs their product is crap quality. My neighbour keeps on pouring grand after grand for stupid repairs into his model S
Elon Musk should have his wealth forcefully redistributed
Maybe Musk should sue them…
Get trump to tariff them. Or buy them, like Greenland!
The TSLA crash going to be glorious, can’t wait.
The stock has been overinflated for years, it’s a grift detached from reality.
The stock market is now literally just a rigged casino where 90%+ of the stocks are owned by the rich.
Tesla doesn’t deserve to tarnish the great inventor’s name. Elon more specifically. But who knows, possibly the company’s management team are all mini Elons. The workers they are not at fault.
Workers are desperate for a union if anything they’re the good guys too
Sure am glad all the car companies decided to use the Tesla charger as the standard. /s
It’s an open standard now, it doesn’t really matter that Tesla was the first. So it’s a good thing, kind of like iPhones switching to “Android charging cables”.
Good.
Having competition tends to do that 🤷
“Europe and the UK” did they move the UK to another continent, or did they mean the EU?
The UK is technically on a few islands, one can use Gibraltar to argue, of course, and historically English crown did possess lots of land in Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine and even Flanders, also that union with Hannover, but ahem.
You know exactly what was meant.
You see there was this little thing called Brexit…
Oh right, is that when they moved to a different tectonic plate?
Oh I see what you’re saying. Yeah, they probably should have said EU but it’s a little pedantic to pretend you didn’t know.
Welcome to the internet.
Tru dat.
Doing a from-heart-to-sun salute tends to hurt sales in UK and Germany, who woulda thought. The stereotype about French is that they don’t care and might even like it, but maybe this is also about build and design quality.
You know it was the French revolution that popularised the guillotine as a means of dealing with wealthy elites?
But yeah I don’t see how Tesla is going to ever repair the damage to their image, unless they can kick musk out and that doesn’t seem likely.
Make a product line of electric guillotines? And dogfood with Musk.
Anyway, the French revolution is not considered a one-sided success.
Read that Tesla pushes December in Norway for padding end of year numbers, resulting in a stagnant January. I think that concutive stagnant months is what would indicate how sick we are with Musk
Elon gonna start sueing the EU for not buying his cars
As usual, in the end the workers will pay and the owner(s) will walk away slightly less incredibly wealthy.
