Europeans still aren’t buying Teslas with figures out Wednesday showing sales plunged for a fifth month in a row in May, a blow to investors who had hoped anger toward Elon Musk would have faded by now.
Tesla sales fell 28% last month in 30 European countries even as the overall market for electric vehicles expanded sharply, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. The poor showing comes after Tesla’s billionaire CEO had promised a “major rebound” was coming last month, adding to a recent buying frenzy among investors.
They were selling on Wednesday, pushing the prices down more than 4% in early afternoon trading.
It’s been a while since I looked at EVs, but my (US) experience at the time was that Tesla was one of very few companies offering sedan-shaped EVs. The US market was full of crossovers & SUVs (like Rivian), and that form factor seems antagonistic to many of the things that make high performance, long range EVs: terrible aerodynamics, high body weight, poor visibility… They’re big enough to fill will batteries to compensate for the poor efficiency, but that just raises costs.
Don’t know about availability in the US, but at least in Europe there are many, many alternatives out there, both from traditional brands (Mercedes, BMW, etc etc) and more recently, from Chinese brands.
A friend bought a BYD Seal the other day, he got a total bargain for their top version at 41k€, but that got me looking into them, and their lineup is looking pretty impressive.
Like I said, it’s been a minute, but BYD isn’t available in the US; looks like Mercedes offers 4 SUV/crossover models starting at $55k and 2 sedans starting at $75k; Kia is all SUV; Hyndai has one sedan and two crossovers. Ford is crossover/truck; GM is all SUVs. More than there were, but non-Tesla sedans are still the exception. I’d love to see BYD in the US. Love to see KEI in the US.
The Mini EV is in the US, but its range is just adequate. Then there’s older models, like the Bolt or Leaf. Ford has an EV Transit van for commercial customers, but its range also sucks.
Hyundai Ioniq 6 is out there, at least.
Yeah, the US market for EVs is bad. Just SUVs and trucks with few exceptions. Not even a good (mini) van.
Had a conversation about this the other day with a coworker, albeit about ICE cars but still applicable I think. Car manufacturers made tremendous progress in effeciency and negated all of that by justifying making their cars 2x bigger than they were 20 years ago. It’s ridiculous. A modern Subaru Outback is about the same size as a mid-90s Suburban. Gets about the same mileage as my 2001 Outback, even with all the effeciency tech
Fair points! In my mind I guess I was thinking cyber truck vs. Rivian truck.