Sales of Tesla fell to 700 units in May, the lowest level in over three years, and the French are saying “non, merci” to the company.
The issue was obviously not the switch to the Model Y.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, asserted last week that despite Europe being the business’s worst region, “everyone is struggling in Europe; there’s no exception,” and that the company had “no demand problem”.
We have previously created a report to show that this is untrue, but additional data from May shows that Tesla’s issues in Europe are getting worse.
The auto market is down 12%, according to May car registration statistics from France, which were just revealed. Tesla’s sales, however, declined considerably faster than those of the market as a whole.
In May, Tesla only shipped 721 cars to France, a 67% decrease from the same month the previous year.
Tesla’s poor performance in Q1 was attributed to the design switch that prevented the Model Y from being available, but this excuse is no longer valid in Q2, as the company is now trailing Q1 in Europe.
Delivery-wise, May was the worst month for Tesla in the previous three years. The new Model Y is already in full production at Gigafactory Berlin and is available in France, but it’s still worse than any month of deliveries in the first quarter.
It’s not looking good, but I’ll write a more thorough post regarding Tesla’s sales in Europe after we have statistics from more nations in May.
In Q2, we have moved past Tesla’s poor Q1 performance, which the company attributed to the Model Y transition. However, April was worse than January, and it now appears that May will be worse than February overall in Europe.
Norway is currently the only area that is doing well, and that is most likely because some of its sizable owner base there have upgraded to the new Model Y. However, it will be fascinating to see if this trend continues for the remainder of the year. I don’t think so. The Model Y transition helped Tesla, but I anticipate that the well-known EV market will also suffer from the harm to the brand.
Given that the May result in France is much worse than the April one, it is especially intriguing. To find a quarter in which Tesla’s second month of a quarter in France was worse, I actually had to go back to Q2 2022.
Demand breakdown is beginning to appear.