Direct sales by the manufacturer in the case of Tesla allow statistics for past periods to be obtained very quickly. February has barely ended, and Tesla sales data already show that in Europe, its products have been in increasingly low demand in the past month. In Germany alone, sales have fallen by more than 70%.
Image Source: Tesla
Alarm bells rang for Tesla at the end of last year as a whole, as the company for the first time in its history reduced sales of electric vehicles, albeit by only one percent. This year, the past two months do not show particularly encouraging statistics for sales of Tesla electric vehicles, if we consider the large markets of the European region. If in February last year more than 6,000 new electric vehicles of this brand were registered in Germany, then in February this year their number fell by 70% to 1,429 units.
France was down 44%, according to Electrek, the Netherlands fell 34.1%, and the trio of northern European countries, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, saw declines in the range of 44 to 48%. Spain fell 44%, and Portugal 45%. The UK stands out against this backdrop, with a 7.7% increase in February after a January decline. In fact, the Foggy Albion has now become Tesla’s largest regional market after a serious sales slump in Germany.
Such dynamics cannot be explained only by the “shift change” in the production of the Tesla Model Y crossover in Germany, where the updated version of the car is gradually being put on the conveyor belt of a local enterprise. The steadily produced Tesla Model 3 is losing popularity in Germany (by 40%) and in France (by as much as 60%). At the same time, sales of electric cars in Germany as a whole increased by 31% in February, so the problem is concentrated in sales of Tesla products.
Even in China, where Tesla operates the world’s largest auto assembly plant, its February sales fell 49% year-on-year to 30,688 units. Rival BYD, meanwhile, saw its vehicle sales, including plug-in hybrids, increase by 90.4%. The news sent Tesla’s shares down nearly 2% in premarket trading.
The company also suffers from protest sentiments fueled by the political activity of its CEO Elon Musk. In New York, police recently had to expel protesters from a Tesla showroom, where they had broken windows and doors. In France, police are investigating an arson attack in a Tesla parking lot, which damaged about 12 new electric cars. Cases of arson attacks on Tesla electric cars for sale have also become more frequent in the United States. In the context of such activity, car owners have begun to re-stick badges from other brands onto their Tesla electric cars so as not to provoke vandals.