Image credit: JPTsla/Twitter
More than 4,000 Model 3s have been produced for Australia over the last nine months, accounting for half of all Tesla vehicles ever destined for Australian shores, according to new figures sourced from Tesla Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs).
Almost 2,000 were made during the third quarter of 2019 for Australia, when the Model 3 finally entered the Australian market after a long three year wait and sought to meet demand mainly from a long list of reservation holders.
Since that initial rush, when Tesla staff including the chairman of the board, Australia’s Robyn Denholm, helped out with deliveries, demand for the Model 3 has remained strong: More than 1,100 Tesla Model 3s were produced for the last quarter of 2019,and a little more than another 1,000 Model 3s were made for the first quarter of 2020.
While it should be noted that the figures, released by Tesla ship tracker VedaPrime on Wednesday, are production numbers only, they do indicate the number of orders taken in Australia for the Model 3.
All in all, the VIN-based production numbers reveal that more than 8,300 Tesla vehicles have been made for Australia in total. These numbers would include written off vehicles and may not reflect the actual number of Tesla vehicles on Australian roads.
The figures are of significant interest for Australia’s lagging electric car market as Tesla prepares to issue its quarterly global earnings report on Thursday morning (Australian time), and with national automotive sales figures due for release next Monday by industry association Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.
They also reflect the ongoing interest in electric vehicles in Australia, which remains a global laggard despite the tripling of electric vehicles numbers on Australian roads in 2019 thanks to the introduction of the Model 3 and other electric vehicles from Hyundai and Nissan in particular.
The Tesla Model 3 electric sedan remains the “electro-mobility poster child” in Europe also, clocking more than 20,000 sales in the continent for the first quarter of 2020 according to figures published today by EV Blogspot’s
notes that for March, the electric vehicle market in Europe (including plug-in hybrids or PHEVs) fared well despite the ongoing challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The European passenger plug-in market registered 84,000 registrations in March (+41%), a great performance considering the effect that the several lock downs across the continent had, with the overall market crashing (-52% YoY), inflating last month plugin share to an amazing 9.9% share (6% BEV), and pulling the 2020 PEV share to 7.5% (4.3% for BEVs alone), well above the 3.6% result of 2019,” writes Pontes.
And it was the Tesla Model 3 driving the charge yet again, claiming just shy of 20% of electric and PHEV sales for the month after delivering just 1,517 units in January and 3,589 in February.
“The usual end-of-quarter flood came for the electro-mobility poster child, with 16,121 deliveries, with the sports sedan winning its first European Best Seller title in 2020,” writes Pontes.
The lion’s share of these went to the UK where 4,718 units were delivered, followed by Germany where 2,034 units were delivered, 1,385 units for France – a new record according to Pontes – and 1,339 in the Netherlands and a best ever 1,084 units in Sweden.
Renault Zoe, which claimed number 1 for both January and February, did quite the opposite, scaling down deliveries from almost 9,782 in January to 6,429 in February, finishing with 4,334 in March as the Covid-19 crisis took hold.
Pontes notes this was not much different from the year before when Renault sold 4,361 in March 2019, and believes it will be business as usual come June.
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Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.
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