Tesla’s sales in Europe are tumbling like a kid at gymnastics camp. In February they were down 42% in Sweden, 48% in Norway and—wait for it—76% in Germany. This is not great news for the global EV transition or for Tesla, folks.
Why the slump? It’s complicated, but we can’t rule out Elon Musk’s meddling in politics as one huge factor. (There are parts of Europe where certain gestures don’t go over too well, to put it gently.) Plus, Tesla’s rather skimpy lineup is facing stiffer competition there than ever before, especially from the bargain-basement Chinese EVs we don’t get here in the States due to massive tariffs.
A generous read of the situation is that a lot of buyers are delaying their purchases until the refreshed Model Y hits Tesla stores. I think that could be a valid theory; the Model Y is still one of the most important new cars on sale, period, and some people are certainly waiting for it. But Model 3 sales have also taken a dive in Europe this year, suggesting deeper issues are at play.
We cover all that and more on this week’s episode of The Plugged-In Podcast. Patrick’s on the road this week, so we fed all of his blogs into a large-language model and created a proprietary AI agent to co-host the show with me. That got super creepy, and also AI Patrick tried to fire everybody. So we asked my colleague Kevin Williams to fill in instead.
On the show, Kevin and I get into a lot besides Tesla. We talk about Waymo’s recent expansion into Austin on the Uber platform, and how it’s running circles around Tesla’s autonomy efforts. Plus, we discuss why you shouldn’t sleep on Level 1 EV charging, and why the Mitsubishi i-MiEV is one of Kevin’s favorite cars despite once being rated a 2/10 by Car & Driver.
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Got a topic or guest you’d like to see featured on the show? Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
