Tesla Sales Drop 67% in France

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 4, 11:06AM EDT · Published Jun 3, 9:15AM EDT

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Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) car sales in May were sharply lower in France and other European countries.
Its sales there may be small, but they are signs of a global problem the company faces.

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Tesla Sales Drop 67% in France — © Production Cybertruck at Tesla Fremont Factory parking lot (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED) by Lcaa9

Most European Union nations have reported their car sales for May. Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) took a beating across several countries. None was worse than France, where sales declined 67% from May of 2024. Car research firm Plateforme Automobile reported Tesla’s sales in France were only 721. Bloomberg reports that is the lowest monthly total since July 2022.

France was not the only market where Tesla’s sales dropped sharply in May. They were off by 54% in Sweden, 31% in Denmark, and 36% in the Netherlands. Taken together, the total sales for May in these markets were only a few thousand vehicles. That is a disturbing trend nevertheless.

Tesla’s sales decline in Europe is part of a wider problem that began earlier this year. In China, the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) market, big local EV companies, led by giant BYD, have hurt its sales. Tesla’s EV market share in the United States dropped below 50% for the first time in the first quarter of this year.

It is easy to blame the decline on CEO Elon Musk’s association with President Donald Trump and his role in cutting U.S. government expenses. Some people consider him to be a leader of the right wing of U.S. politics, and one who is aggressive in his comments about foreign elections.

There may be at least three other reasons for the bad numbers. Tesla’s fleet is old. It has not introduced a new model in years. That is different from the strategy of almost all other big car companies, which try to keep their model lines fresh by launching new vehicles.

The next reason is that Tesla has tough competition that it did not have two years ago. This includes large Chinese car companies and such legacy manufacturers as Ford, GM, and Hyundai/Kia. While each legacy car company has lost billions of dollars on EVs and has only small market share to show, each also has deep pockets.

Finally, late-model Teslas have flooded the used market. People have opted to buy these at sharp discounts instead of paying full price for new ones. This bargain hunting has probably hurt Tesla’s new car sales.

Tesla sales in Europe may be small, but they are indications of a global problem faced by the company.

Prediction: 1 Electric Vehicle Stock Poised to Overtake Tesla by 2030

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.