Tesla is continuing to lose significant market share in Europe, according to figures that also show mass adoption of electric cars across the continent continues to be stuck in the slow lane.
Within the European Union sales of Tesla, the continent’s pre-eminent electric car brand, slumped 48 per cent in October from 10,800 to 5,600.
For the first ten months of the year Tesla sales are down year-on-year by 39 per cent at 117,000.
Across wider Europe, including the UK and Norway, two of the leading adopters of zero-emission vehicles, Tesla sales in October were also down by 48 per cent at just short of 7,000. In the year to date they are off by nearly 30 per cent at 180,000.
A year ago Tesla had grabbed 2.4 per cent of total European sales in the ten months of 10.8 million. That market share has crashed to 1.6 per cent of a total market that has grown by 200,000 vehicles to more than 11 million.
Tesla declines to give a running commentary on its monthly sales but has previously pointed to the impact on sales of the delayed changeover to the latest generation of its bestselling Model Y.
Others have argued that Tesla has come under pressure from the arrival in Europe of Chinese competition with vehicles of comparable quality and cheaper in price.
The latest monthly sales figures show that BYD is outselling Tesla by more than two to one, though China’s biggest electric car manufacturer does, unlike Tesla, also sells cars — and in large numbers — that have petrol engines.
For the first ten months, BYD is hard on the heels of Tesla, having sold 138,000 cars across the wider Europe, a little more than 40,000 short of Tesla’s total sales.
Other commentators, backed by testimony at the forecourt, suggest that car buyers, both private and fleet, are eschewing the Tesla brand because of perceived reputational damage wrought by the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, and his forays into politics and on social media.
Notwithstanding the decline of Tesla, the electric car market is failing to spark in Europe, accounting for just one in six new vehicles sold.
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“The battery-electric car market share reached 16.4 per cent in the year to date, yet it is still below the pace needed at this stage of the transition,” said the ACEA, the European carmakers’ association, which collates the sales data.
The UK is Europe’s second-largest market for electric cars, up 29 per cent year on year to 386,000, accounting for 22 per cent of all sales.
The UK trails Germany, the single biggest automotive market on the continent. Its electric car sales have risen nearly 40 per cent to 434,000 this year so far. However, that still only accounts for 18 per cent of the total market, as electric car manufacturers and retailers attempt to play catch up following a fall-off in the sale of zero-emission vehicles after the withdrawal of state subsidies.
