Tesla's share of the West European new car market sinks to its lowest level in almost three years and halves from peak

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According to Schmidt Automotive Research data, Tesla's share of the West European new passenger car market has sunken to its lowest level in almost three years, using official individual market data for fifteen of the eighteen markets that have declared March results, with the data for the remaining three fringe markets still estimated.

During Q1 2025, according to the research, Tesla's share of the total new car market across all fuels sank to an almost three-year low of just 1.7% share of all new cars that entered the 18 market region between January and March.

A zero-COVID impact on China, affecting shipments to Europe during 2022, was the last time its share dipped so low.

Q1 2025's poor performance resulted in a year-on-year fall of one-third (-36%), seeing quarterly new registrations struggling to achieve more than 50,000 units (52,000).

The fall was almost three times the rate the US company witnessed globally during the same period, falling by "just" 13% between January and March compared to the same period last year.

That means the West European share of total global volumes fell to just 15% of all Teslas entering roads during the opening quarter.  

Alongside the likely delay in consumers taking delivery of the Model Y refresh until the final month of the quarter and the potential political hit from Musk's increasingly polarising comments and support for various political factions across Europe, it could also show increasing competition from incumbents aiming to reach new CO2 fleet targets from 2025.

The Chinese OEM gains across the region have mainly stalled, however, since the EU imposed reciprocal anti-subsidy tariffs on Chinese BEVs in November 2024, with a pivot to focusing on non-BEVs, navigating those levies, according to our research and published reports. German underutilisation becoming an issue? While tariffs are impacting Tesla Model 3 imports to the EU from China, with an extra 7.8% anti-subsidy levy in place since the start of November 2024 on top of the already standard 10% level for finished vehicles entering the 27 EU single market region, lowering margins on the model, the slowing demand of the European manufactured Model Y is likely pushing up costs of the German-made model with underutilisation of the 375,000 capacity plant becoming an increasing issue. This likely led to the decision to export models from the European facility to non-European regions such as the Middle-East and Taiwan since the middle of last year, while also making a backload available to utilise shipping capacity on the return journey to China.

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*Western Europe 18 Markets: EU Member States prior to the 2004 enlargement plus EFTA markets Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, plus UK