Tesla’s Europe Sales Plunge 49%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 26, 10:08AM EST

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Tesla Trouble In Europe All Year
Also Trouble In China

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Tesla’s Europe Sales Plunge 49% — © 2023 Getty Images / Getty Images News via Getty Images

As part of a slide that has gone on for months, Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) EU, UK, and EFTA registrations (the proxy for sales) dropped 49% in October to 6,964. Registrations of its arch-rival, China-based BYD, jumped 207% to 17,470. Tesla has lost a large share of the EV market in the region, and it may not regain it. Aside from BYD, every one of the region’s largest legacy car companies is pressing to sell EVs. The data comes from the Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

Europe is not the only huge market where Tesla is in trouble. Tesla’s monthly sales in China hit a three-year low in October at 26,006. Dozens of local EV companies are swarming it. Some will not be in business in a year, but they are still putting price pressure on competitors. China is the world’s largest EV market by far.

Tesla’s US market share dropped to 45% early this year. In 2019, it was 80%. And for the time being, it has no Chinese competitors in America due to tariffs. As in Europe, legacy car companies have moved aggressively into EVs, even though it has cost them tens of billions of dollars.

The drop in Tesla’s sales worldwide means CEO Elon Musk must convince the market that Tesla is a robotics and AI company that will produce the first fully autonomous car and a robotaxi. Tesla already has stiff US competition in the self-driving car business in the US, led by Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Waymo

So far, Musk’s strategy with investors has largely worked. After a collapse in April, Tesla’s stock is up 3% this year, although that is shy of the 14% increase for the S&P 500. Tesla also has an extraordinary market cap of $1.4 trillion, making it the 10th-most-valuable public company in the world.

Maybe Europe doesn’t matter.

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.