Can tumbling Tesla shrug off Musk’s shocking antics?

It wasn’t so long ago that Telsa was cruising along the fast lane of the global freeway. More recently, though, it seems like its controversial CEO Elon Musk is intent on driving his company into a brick wall.

- JAMES MOORE

The latest update from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association confirms a trend that has been frightening Tesla’s investors. Sales across Europe – including the EU, the UK and the members of the European Free Trade Association – plunged by 40 per cent in February 2025 versus last year, and the company’s market share declined from 2.8 per cent to 1.8 per cent. It looks even worse when you consider that sales of battery-powered vehicles overall jumped by more than a quarter (26.1 per cent).

This is a trend that is picking up speed. Tesla shifted 327,000 units in Europe in 2024, an 11 per cent decline on 2025. Europe is not as important a market as the US, which accounted for 655,000 sales, or China, where Tesla sold 603,000 vehicles out of a total of 1.79 million. But it still accounts for roughly one in every five Teslas leaving the gigafactory. It also played an important role in the global decline in sales from the record 1.81 million recorded in 2023.

And the Euro-rot may be spreading. Data from S&P Global recorded an 11 per cent decline in the US in January. Rubbing salt into the wound were figures from BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle maker. Its revenues jumped by 29 per cent to 777bn yuan ($107bn, £83bn), zipping past Tesla’s $97.7bn.