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).
“Europe and the UK” did they move the UK to another continent, or did they mean the EU?
You know exactly what was meant.
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 see there was this little thing called Brexit…
Oh right, is that when they moved to a different tectonic plate?
Yes.
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.
So, I hate to be the breaker of bad news, but the UK has left the EU 🤷 Don’t shoot the messenger
EU ≠ Europe
Europe is a continent. The European Union is a group of countries in Europe, no longer including the UK.
Maps like this are the only way my feeble American brain can process complicated European things.
Ukraine is a candidate country, by the way. Since June 2022.
https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/european-neighbourhood-policy/countries-region/ukraine_en
This post unfortunately leaves out the all important Council of Europe (not to be confused with the European Council). 😉
The EU one has camo painted seas, so I needed several seconds for my understanding of “what is where” kicked in. I wonder how they got this stupid idea
Great Britain and the British Isles are geographical terms, not political ones. Sometimes publications will say Great Britain to mean England, Scotland, and Wales, but not Northern Ireland but they also don’t include things like the Isle of Man in that even though technically Great Britain does include the Isle of Man.
Unless the conversation is explicitly about geography, and land masses you should not use anything other than the United Kingdom.
Great Britain is the name of the big island that England, Wales and mainland Scotland sits on. The British Isles include Great Britain, the Isle of Man (and also Ireland, the Isle of Wight, the Hebrides, the Shetlands, the Isles of Scilly and (debatably) the Channel Islands.
You’re not the boss of me, bruv. The United Kingdom doesn’t encompass the Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man) which have the same monarch as the UK but are (at least within certain limits) self-governing. So if I want to talk about them (and sometimes I do, my conversation occasionally involves tax shelters and motorcycle races), restricting myself to the UK won’t be sufficient to include them.
Read the comment. EU - maybe, but not the Europe,how do you leave a continent?
Give it a couple million years of plate tectonics.
Or maybe if everyone jumps up in the air at the same time.
Yes but not the continent despite what certain people would like
Except for Jutland, the same could be said of the 400+ islands that make up Denmark. Yet Denmark is universally regarded as part of Europe, despite the main landmass/island pedantry.