Tesla sales are dropping around the world
China is bad and the US is worse so far this year. Don’t even talk about Europe.
When Tesla reported its disappointing 2024 deliveries and earnings last month, CEO Elon Musk was able to deflect a price drop with a hearty dose of forward-looking optimism.
That may be short-lived.
Tesla doesn’t break out regional sales, but a number of analysts and research firms do. Despite promising a “return to growth” in 2025 — revised from the 20% to 30% growth it had expected a quarter earlier — January’s numbers across the company’s three biggest markets look terrible.
In the US, where sales declined 5% last year, new data from Wards Intelligence shows that Tesla sales declined more than 13% in January 2025 compared with the same month a year earlier. Wards did not reply to a request for comment.
That follows news that Tesla sales plummeted across Europe in January, according to reporting by the Financial Times, after declining 10.5% in 2024. In the first month of this year, sales were down 63% in France, 59.5% in Germany, 38% in Norway, and 8% in the UK.
Even in China, which offset EU and US declines last year, the news is bad for Tesla.
In January of this year, Tesla sales dropped 11.5% in China, according to data reported by Reuters from the China Passenger Car Association released late last week. Tesla, which recently released a more expensive version of its Model Y in the country, is running up against low-cost options from competitors like BYD.
Of course, some of the declines might have to do with customers waiting for Tesla’s long-awaited lineup of lower-priced models — something that steel and aluminum tariffs could jeopardize.
For now, sales are down this year in Tesla’s three major car markets, so 2025 isn’t looking so hot for the EV maker.
