Tesla sales fall off a cliff in Germany and UK, even as EV market surges

The news continues to be grim for EV giant Tesla in Europe, with sales falling off the proverbial cliff in the key markets of Germany and UK during April, with monthly sales falling by 46 per cent and 62 per cent respectively.

New figures published on Tuesday by Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, or KBA) showed Tesla only sold 885 units in April, down 45.9 per cent from April 2024.

For the first four months of 2025, a total of 5,820 Tesla cars were sold in Germany, down 60.4 per cent from the same period a year ago.

This, despite the fact that battery EVs (BEVs) accounted for 18.8 per cent of all new cars sold in Germany through April, totalling 45,535, a rise of 53.5 per cent year-on-year.

Tesla has its major gigafactory located in Berlin, which supplies the European market. Some have credited the sales drop to the retooling of Tesla factories for the new Model Y, and to consumers waiting for those new deliveries – but it also seems clear that there is consumer backlash to CEO Elon Musk’s support for far-right political parties, including Germany’s AfD.

Tesla’s sales were similarly dismal in the United Kingdom, which reported an 8.1 per cent year-on-year lift in EV sales to 24,558, and a market share of 20.4 per cent. However,  Tesla saw its sales numbers plummet from 1,352 in April of 2024 to only 512 in April 2025, a drop of 62.13 per cent.

Most interestingly for the UK’s figures is the month-to-month decline for Tesla. Unlike in Germany and other European countries, Tesla had been doing relatively well so far this year, with its year-to-date sales only down by 1 per cent for the first four months.

This was thanks in large part to a strong March, with 7,164 Teslas sold, which was in line with the same month a year earlier and contributed to a similar first quarter to that seen in 2024.

In Sweden, Tesla’s new car sales in April were down 80.7 per cent from the same month a year ago, dropping to their lowest levels since October 2022. Sales in the Netherlands for April were down 73.8 per cent, down 67.2 per cent in Denmark, down 59.4 per cent in France, and down 33 per cent in Portugal.

And in Norway, where Tesla has been particularly dominant thanks to the country’s pro-EV policies, sales dropped over 55 per cent from the previous month and were down 31 per cent from the same month a year earlier.