Tesla is no longer the EV sales top dog in Western Europe, report says

In case the last few quarters of profitability haven't hipped you to this, Tesla sells a lot of electric cars. This is true pretty much everywhere that it operates. However, according to a report published Wednesday by InsideEVs, Tesla is no longer the biggest fish in Western Europe.

While other electric vehicle makers have had a relatively slow increase in sales compared to Tesla's big spike and subsequent plateau starting in January of 2019, the slow and steady route seems to be paying off for the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance and the Volkswagen Group, both of which eclipsed Tesla's sales as of August of 2019.

That trend has continued, with industry analyst Matthias Schmidt stating that Tesla's Western European (this includes the EU plus UK, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) market share has fallen from 33.8% down to just 13.5% over the last year. That's a massive drop, but why is the Big T losing ground?

Part of it has to do with the fact that Tesla is a single brand going up against multibrand conglomerates. Next, Tesla doesn't really sell super-affordable electric cars; the competition has more entry-level EVs available for people, even though they don't offer anywhere near the range or performance of a Model 3, for example. 

Lastly, and this is a big one, many of these competitor companies are likely willing to sell their EVs with a much smaller profit margin to meet corporate emissions targets. They can use the EV sales to shore up the emissions side of things while their diesel and gasoline product sales keep the lights on, so to speak.

What does this mean long-term? That's hard to say, but Tesla's German factory will likely help make the vehicles sold in Western Europe more affordable, at least somewhat, and that may make a dent. We also suspect that Model Y will help significantly once it becomes available in Europe sometime in 2021.