Tesla isn’t just facing competition from the U.S. and China. Now Elon Musk’s company has to worry about Europe as well.
BMW sold more EVs than Tesla in Europe for the first time last month, according to Bloomberg. It’s just the latest sign that the American automaker’s hold on the EV market is starting to slip.
The German luxury marque sales of fully battery-powered vehicles in the trade bloc increased by more than a third last month to 14,869 units, according to market data from Jato Dynamics. Tesla, meanwhile, saw its sales (or deliveries as the brand calls them) fall by more than 15 percent to 14,561 units. That’s a difference of just 308 vehicles, but we have a feeling BMW won’t care one bit since it marks the first time it has outsold its U.S.-based counterpart. In total, Europeans bought 139,300 EVs in July, a figure that was six percent lower than the same month last year.
Of course, it wasn’t all bad news for Tesla. The company’s has sold 178,700 EVs across the continent during the first seven months of the year, by far the most of any automaker. It’s mid-size SUV, the Model Y, was also the highest-selling EV model for the month. That didn’t stop the company’s stock price from falling by 1.5 percent in the initial hours after the news.
At a time when many of its legacy peers are walking back pledges to go all-electric, BMW has found a strategy that works. The company is second only to Tesla in EV sales in Europe this year, having sold 97,525 battery-powered vehicles, a 49 percent year-over-year increase. Its all-electric lineup, which includes the i4 sedan (pictured up top) and iX SUV, has struck a chord with consumers at a time when EV sales are slowing down in the continent due to countries like Germany and Sweden either stopping or reducing subsidies help sales. The company even has some exciting all-electric models on the way.
Whether or not Tesla sells more EVs in Europe than BMW in 2024, its position as the world’s best-selling electric automaker is under threat like never before. China’s BYD sold more battery-powered vehicles globally during the final quarter of 2023, and the company’s U.S. market share slipped beneath 50 percent for the first time in the second quarter of this year. And with the company having now cleared the Cybertruck’s waitlist things could even worse.
