Tesla continued a run of weak sales in the EU in November, with new car registrations of Elon Musk’s brand down a third, while Chinese carmakers’ sales soared.
Tesla sold 12,130 new cars across the EU last month, down from 18,430 in November 2024, shrinking its market share from 2.1% to 1.4%, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (Acea), a lobby group.
The Chinese carmaker BYD recorded by far the fastest sales growth, with registrations across Europe almost tripling year on year up to November, to 42,500. Chinese state-owned SAIC, the owner of the MG brand, recorded sales increases of 26% to push sales to 217,000.
Both brands make battery cars but also hybrids, which combine a smaller battery with a petrol or diesel engine. Hybrid car sales, including plug-ins with the ability to use charge points, accounted for 44% of all sales, amid a push by European carmakers to sell more of the vehicles, which are more profitable for them.
The rise in hybrids has coincided with a strong lobbying push by European carmakers to persuade the EU to weaken electric car sales targets. The EU last week confirmed it would do so, allowing 10% of car sales to have internal combustion engines after 2035.
Yet despite the intensive lobbying, battery electric cars accounted for 18.8% of the European market, or 2.3m cars in the first 11 months of the year, up from 15% in the same period last year.
However, that rise in market share came even amid struggles for Tesla, the only pure electric brand among those whose sales are tracked by Acea.
Tesla’s sales slowdown started late last year, around the time when Musk, the world’s richest man, started to try to intervene in European politics. He backed Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland and appeared virtually at campaign events for them and British far-right groups.
He also had a prominent alliance with Donald Trump, only to fall out spectacularly with the US president in the summer, in part over the withdrawal of subsidies and supportive regulations for electric cars.
Despite the sales slowdown, Musk’s net worth on paper remains far higher than any other person in the world. The Bloomberg billionaires index puts his wealth at $647bn (£480bn), with the rocket company SpaceX the largest component of his wealth, followed by a Tesla shareholding worth about $200bn.
Tesla’s market value is more than $1.5tn, more than all the other western carmakers combined, although much of that valuation is thought to stem from investors’ backing for Musk’s vision of robotics and AI rather than the fundamentals of its car business.
Overall, EU sales of new cars rose by 1.4% in the year to November compared with last year, a fifth consecutive monthly rise in a row. Sales rose by 1.9% to 12.1m for the first 11 months of the year when including the European Free Trade Area and the UK.
